2 - Expansion: Normandy and its Dukes in the Eleventh Century, 996–1087

Summary

Richard II, 996–1026

ALTHOUGH the evidence can be interpreted in different ways, the interpretation offered in the previous chapter would have Richard I expand the reach of his authority to cover an area that stretched from the Bresle to the Drome, and from the Channel coast to the very south of the Lieuvin and perhaps even into Houlme. He had also grabbed one isolated pocket of demesne, and thus influence, in the north-west of the Cotentin between Les Pieux and Brix, and another in the Avranchin, where he held a cluster of vills along the coast from Saint-Jeanle- Thomas to Mont-Saint-Michel (see Maps 2 and 3). These pockets of Norman influence in the west, which almost certainly owed their origin to seaborne raids, had become loosely joined to the bulk of Richard's dominions as a result of his marriage to Gunnor, which brought a great swathe of the central and southern Cotentin under his (indirect) sway. This expansion of the duke's authority, as well as the appearance of all seven bishops of the province of Rouen at Richard's court in 990, allowed Richer of Reims to write of a grant to Ketil of the whole area covered by the province of Rouen in the second half of the 990s, although he thereby implied that the duke's authority ran evenly across the whole of this area, which was very far from being the case.

Such expansion was bound to cause resistance, and so it was that when the long-lived and well-established Richard I died, the metal of his untried son was tested almost immediately. Assuming that the story was not inserted into the Gesta Normannorum ducum solely to provide a precedent for the treatment of the burgesses of Alençon c. 1052, it seems that a ‘peasants’ revolt’ broke out in unspecified regions of the duchy c. 1000. ‘Throughout every part of Normandy the peasants unanimously formed many assemblies and decided to live according to their own wishes, such that in respect both of short cuts through the woods and of the traffic of the rivers with no bar of previously established right in their way, they might follow laws of their own.