Sun's Medieval Compendium.

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How Kings were made.

Elect
Medieval Election took place using a coalition of agreeable Earls or Princes. A good example of this in the Medieval period can be seen in Widikunds description of Otto’s election (see the handout)
Otto’s election as King of Germany in 936 AD was significant, as it was an election by Princes (Germany was a collection of Principalities)
Otto’s election, according to Widikund, was also sanctified by God.

Designation
In earlier medieval history, the throne was not necessarily hereditary. This was to ensure strength of rule.
Succession was normally secured by designation. Henry “the Fowler” the First, King of Germany, designated Otto as his heir.

Coronation
The partnership of Church and Monarchy.
Coronation was so holy, it set the King apart from the commoners (earliest recording was King Pippin of France, 751)
In this method, the King was like a priest. He could not carry out the sacraments, but he ruled the Kingdom in Christ’s stead.
During the Capetian period (est. 800-1000 AD) designated heirs could be crowned during the former Kings lifetime. (e.g. Louis VI had his son Louis VII crowned because his own health was failing.)  this is not really an English tradition.

How Kings lived.

Wealth is based on land. It wielded agriculture, revenue, taxes and people. In 1066, when the Normans invaded, they moved to take Winchester, as it had the treasury, swiftly to reinforce their power in the country and make it possible for them to finance a complete invasion.
England’s Kings (before 1066) controlled single states (Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria). King Cnut unified them, King Edward the Confessor realised that this had been lost to his Earl, Godwin, and King William stressed the fact that all land belonged to him  The Kings wealth varied with the Kings sense of power.
The French Kings had a tiny domain in France from which they could directly draw an income called “Ile-de-France” (The Royal Domain). The rest was held by various Comtes and Ducs (Counts and Dukes).
Louis VI was able to secure his royal domain and aimed to expand it by marrying his son to Eleanor of Aquitaine. However, this failed after relations between the King and the Duke of Aquitaine crumbled, and so Eleanor was married to Henry II of England. Nearly half of France fell into English hands.
Because wealth was based on land, conquest was a necessity. In the 1090’s the Norman Barons began to invade Wales so as to secure more revenue.

How Kings ruled.

English Kings were peripatetic (which means they moved around their land) normally with their family and court.
As time progressed, the court became larger and had to govern independent of a King.
e.g. During Henry II reign, Aquitaine and Anjou came into the his hands. He could spend years at a time in France travelling with his court, and so the government would need to rule in his stead at times.
Destroying those who would insurrect also secured power – Henry I had no problems casting away those who were disloyal.
The Church also helped to secure their power by offering a number of aids (morality, divinity etc.)
Law and justice – the king swears to protect and serve to show their power. Saxon time saw the most advanced and sophisticated law system in all of Europe, and the Normans observed this and knew not to change it.
There were 2 significant offices for local government:
Sherriff- He collected tax and took it to Winchester to account for his regions revenue. He also read out the Kings writ.
Justiciar- Royal Law.

Kings and their Image

In paintings, it can vary between a display of great martial skill to a show of benevolence.
Statues, such as those that surround churches in France, could be Kings so as to show a holy connection.
The royal seal was the most common method of displaying an image of the King because the seal would be used very frequently.

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The Domesday Book:
A fiscal document, concerned with finances and accountability. T was compiled less than 20 years after the Norman conquest and allowed William to see what he owned. It contained info about England, but some places are missing. There is no info on the Northern Counties of Northumbria, Lancashire, London or Winchester. However, it allowed William to survey the status of his newly acquired Kingdom, and the effect his invasion had on it. There were originally seven Domesday books (some say perhaps nine). Great Domesday, or Domesday I, compiled info about all the lands except East Anglia, which was subsequently put into the seventh book, also known as Little Domesday or Domesday II. It showed a list of lands held directly by the king, and land held by men gifted it by the king (tenants-in-chief, Barons, Earls etc.) The book relied entirely on the Anglo-Saxon community to obtain accurate info; so there is a possibility that some entries could be very wrong. The Domesday Books attempted to answer three main questions seen as of great importance to William – How much was the land being assessed by the doomsmen worth during Edward the Confessors reign, at the time of Williams invasion, and it current worth.

The Importance of the Manor:
The word ‘Manor’ occurs over and over again in the Domesday Books. It is more related to the south than the north (due to frequency.) A ‘Manor’ was a consolidated estate over which the Lord of the Manor held jurisdiction (known as Lordship). The Domesday Books categorises six types of people who would live in a Manor or Lordship.
1. Sokemen - (Freemen)
2. Villeins - (These accounted for 4/10 of the population of England, but were more or less related to status rather than wealth, so the poorest man in town could be a villain, whereas a richer man may be a cottar.)
3. Cottars – (Worked for the freedom they owned.)
4. Small holders – (Same as the above.)
5. Slaves – (Not free, and recorded as if an item. A later term used to refer to them as is serf)
6. Knights – (derived from the Anglo-Saxon word for boy, “Cnichts. Often remembered for the chivalric code and approach to everyday life.)

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TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THESE NOTES, SEARCH FOR "THE WANDERER" AND "CAEDMON'S HYMN"

Literature offers us a clear (sometimes distorted across different genres i.e. satire) image of the aspirations of a culture. A good example would be ‘The Song of Roland.’ It also sometimes offers an alternative ideal or critical view of the culture in consideration. In this way, it can highlight the tensions in a society.

Anglo-Saxons
A Germanic people (settlers from Angeln and Saxony) who immigrated to England after the collapse of the Roman Empire in 410 AD. They were originally a Paganistic peoples, brining their religion to Britain and converting the language into what we now call Old English, but after the arrival of St Augustine in 597 in Kent, a large proportion of the population became Christian (if only for a little while.) This conversion from Celtic Christianity to Roman Catholicism is a crucial point for literature in history, as the spreading of the Catholic faith is largely dependent on the written word and none of the Angles could speak Latin, let alone write anything legible without the aid of the runic alphabet., so the priests learnt Old English and delivered sermons and hymns in that instead. This is not to say that literature was definitely introduced to the Angles at this point in time, but it seems very likely.

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There is plenty of documentation on this topic (just have to find it :/)

Chester:
The Earldom of Chester was a highly peculiar one: the Earl of Chester, Hugh d’Avranches/Lupus (1071/7 – 1101) was perceived as a semi-regal noble due to the amount of lands he held within his Earldom. It was not abnormal for the king to hold more than 50% of land in an Earldom or Barony, yet this was not true in Chester.
King William set up 7 Earls in 7 Earldoms, on par with power with the King. Three of these Earls were called ‘March Earls’ as they were on the border with Wales. The earls were of Hereford, Shrewsbury and Chester. The Earl of Chester not only governed Chester, but owned many manors throughout England. There are no Royal Manor’s in Chester. However, the Earl of Chester was still bounded under the Oath of Servitude and subinfeudation.
In the Domesday Book, Cheshire is referred to as “...the land between the Ribble and the Mersey” referring to Preston and Manchester. However, this would also include Chester, so the lands under the Earls governance were very large.

The Constable of Chester:
Effectively, the second-in-command of Chester. The first of the constables was William, son of Nigel. Over time, this rank became the military commander of the Earls retinue of mounted soldiers. William, son of Nigel, according to the Domesday book, owned 30 manors given to him in homage from the Earl. Actively the Lord of Halton, holding an administrative centre in that area (Caput.) Halton was worth 40s a year, which increased to 50s in a few years. Constable William granted Oddard, Geoffrey, Aethelhard, Humphrey, Oddard and Hardwin land in Halton. These six men were almost certainly knights. We can tell this as, during one of the constables Honour courts (an Honour was a compact set of properties that offered military aid) a line reveals that William gave one of these men a “pair of gilded spurs worth sixpence a year.” It is not certain, but this may be referring to the process of knighting. The stereotypical view that knights were made as such by being dubbed by the king in truth occurred very rarely.

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Basic Info:
Bishops were a form of non-secular rule, looked to for religious and moral guidance. A bishop lived in a civitas (city/bishopric) where he would have a large church and a gathering of people to fill his church. The people who lived beyond the walls of the civitas, or in the villages around it, were called pagana, but this is not to suggest that they are pagans, rather that Christians congregated in city centres. Bishops could also live in diocese, which is surrounded by parishes. Very early medieval bishops were assisted by members of the church called “clergy.”

The first Pope was Peter, (Rome gained medieval prestige, like Antioch and Alexandria, due to the view that they had been evangelised by Apostles/Disciples. Rome and Antioch had been evangelised by Peter, and Mark had evangelised Alexandria.) Later, Popes would name themselves “Vicar of Peter” and “Vicar of Christ.”

A court of bishops was used to trial criminals on moral crimes (murder, heresy etc.) rather than a secular court.

The Role of Bishops During the Period of Conversion:
Pope Gregory I ‘the Great’ of 590, stepped into the protective void left by the crumbled Roman Empire. He was now responsible for the defence of Rome from the ‘barbarians’ at her walls, particularly from Authari and his Lombards (would, in 591, be led by Agilulf, the Duke of Turin.)

Bede (sometimes referred to as ‘Saint Bede’ or ‘The Venerable Bede’ was a monk historian who lived in Jarrow, wrote a large works called the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, which simply means ‘The Ecclesiastical History of the English People,’ which focuses on the period of conversion in England. Here is particular moment Bede describes in his works, in which Pope Gregory first sees an Angle. He is astounded by the look of the man – tall, muscular, blonde and fair faced – and asks where this man is from. His assistant explains that the man is from England and, after being asked if he is Christian, replies with a ‘no’ (technically the Angles were Celtic Christians, but Gregory obviously meant Roman Catholic.) Gregory asks what the name of his people is, and the assistant replies ‘Angles.’ At this point, Gregory chuckles to himself exclaiming that it is a shame that such men are not Christian for they do really look like angels.

He sent a mission to Britain, led by Augustine (a.k.a Saint Augustine, Augustine of Canterbury and Apostle of the English,) in 597. Augustine landed in Kent and, within a few years, was able to convert King Aethelbert to Christianity, and as a consequence, turned most of the people of Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria into Christians. When the conversion had happened, Gregory had England split into two, upper and lower England, in which two archbishops would rule (York and London/Canterbury) who would themselves appoint 12 bishops who would assist in their provinces.

Bishops in the Saxon Empire and Other Kingdoms:
In 918, Henry, Duke of Saxony, was elected King of Germany (18 years before Otto) and so needed to control the other Princes, gain a religious prestige with the ecclesiastical servants in his empire and with the Pope (John X). When Otto was Emperor, he, at one point, had one of his Dukes, the Duke of Cologne, deposed and put in place his brother. A fantastically strategic choice, as his brother was a priest, and so was not married, was not liable to marry either, thus would not have any heirs and have any expansive desires like most nobles.

Geoffrey de Clinton was appointed Bishop of Cornwall, even though he had no ecclesiastical training, by King Henry I in 1134, due to his administrative skills.

Another famous appointment was Thomas Becket. He was appointed by King Henry II in 1162 after having held a secular office. He famously took the upon the duties of his new office with a new ‘born again’ type zeal, which ultimately led him into conflict with his old friend the King, and his downfall in 1170 after the Archbishop of York crowned the new King, consequently being excommunicated by Becket.