5 - Local Loyalty and Absentee Authority in Thirteenth-Century Normandy: The Evidence of the Querimoniae Normannorum (1247)

Summary

King John's ‘loss of Normandy’ to the French king Philip Augustus in 1204 greatly enlarged the area over which the Capetian monarch exercised dominion. However, the political and economic gains which the conquest of the duchy brought to the French royal domain were tempered by the difficulty of ensuring that the authority of the French king was established and exercised effectively in Normandy without inciting rebellion. Although the Capetian monarchs paid close attention to the duchy after 1204, Normandy came to be regarded as ‘a supine dominion’: an important territory, but one whose importance was overshadowed by the royal domain centred on Paris. The duchy in the thirteenth century was no longer at the centre of Continental expansion, as it had been under Angevin rule. Instead, the Capetian monarchs ‘exercised power across the duchy from afar through baillis and a coterie of trusted magnates and royal knights’, who were responsible for maintaining and exercising royal authority in the name of the king.

Great care was taken to appoint suitable officials to these posts; an exemplum from the fourteenth century tells of how Louis IX, king of France between 1226 and 1270, recorded information about men in positions of administrative responsibility, listing their virtues and using this information to make appointments to local offices as they became vacant. Nonetheless, the conduct of these local officials frequently brought them into conflict with those living under their rule. A kingdom-wide enquête carried out under the orders of Louis IX in 1247–8 to investigate the conduct of local officials ‘uncovered widespread local corruption […] and intimidation of the populace’, and a significant number of people living under French rule took the opportunity to complain about the corruption of French royal officials.

The Norman returns to this enquête, the Querimoniae Normannorum (‘Complaints of the Normans’), are particularly valuable because they demonstrate how the changes which were imposed by Capetian local officials after 1204 secured the annexation of Normandy to the French royal domain. The duchy remained a distinct political unit in the thirteenth century, and retained many of its former traditions. Nonetheless, there were a number of important changes which affected the lives of those who lived in the duchy, and profound social, economic and cultural changes accompanied the collapse of Plantagenet rule and the establishment, exercise and consolidation of Capetian royal authority.