9 - Movements, Messengers, Mandates, and Minions

Summary

IT was concluded in Chapter 6 that the duke retained executive power over his duchy in his own hands at all times. That power might wax and wane across his dominions as a whole, but in theory at least the duke stood at the top of the Norman political hierarchy, and was the principal point of contact with the French king, the pope and his legates, and other outside powers and visitors. All of this provided a strong incentive for petitoners and beneficiaries to visit his court. These visitors, it was hoped, would be awed by the political theatre of the buildings, the furniture and utensils and servants found in them, and by the appearance and aspect of the dukes themselves.

But it was essential that ducal government and power should be more than just a show. Petitioners and would-be beneficiaries wanted effective government. They wanted to know that a duke's confirmation of their possessions was worth the parchment it was written on – and the cost of the ink used to write on it and that of the journey to the court and back. The belt and braces of an anathema clause and a fine provided a degree of insurance, but as Church reform and ducal power grew the anathema slowly gave way to the forfeiture clause, making God less central where secular matters were concerned. Ducal justice, too, was shown to be effective and efficient, even though existing ties of lordship and local loyalties might obstruct the dukes’ attempts to bring the whole of the duchy under their jurisdiction. The dukes, then, proved their worth to their subejcts, and their subjects kept coming to the court for help, justice, and confirmations as a result.

This, then, was a symbiotic relationship. A duke needed his subjects to come to them, and a duke's subjects needed his aid and protection against their aggressive, sometimes stronger, sometimes socially superior, neighbours. And so they sought him out wherever he was. More often than not, that would have been Rouen, or so the first section of this chapter will argue, for the dukes seem to have operated what historians have termed a palace government, that is one that remained largely static in a capital city or palace (or at least in a very few of them), rather than an itinerant government that moved regularly between a number of different centres.