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In Pursuit of Aristocratic Women: A Key to Success in Norman England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

RaGena C. DeAragon
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Extract

Marriage has been a means of climbing the social ladder in most societies, and post-conquest England was no exception. The Conquest had provided a sweeping opportunity for men of all strata of the feudal hierarchy to gain lands and wealth in England, but high social status and prestige remained the prerogative of magnate families who had constituted the aristocracy of Normandy and northern France before 1066. Most of these families had themselves risen only recently to wealth and power through ducal patronage, but by 1066 they were firmly entrenched in their Norman estates and in the duke's inner circle of advisors. Many magnates possessed comital titles and ties of kinship with the Norman duke-kings, and all profited greatly from the Conqueror's victory at Hastings and his subsequent redistribution of English lands. Families such as the Beaumonts, Montgomerys, Clares, Mandevilles, and Warennes continued to enjoy the highest aristocratic honors in Anglo-Norman society.

In the second generation after the Conquest, a number of men of lower social standing amassed land and political importance through service to William Rufus and Henry I, desiring to be accepted as peers by the great magnates. Their striving for social success is illustrated by William of Malmesbury in his History of the Kings of England. In recounting the plan of William fitz Osbern to marry the widow of Count Baldwin of Flanders, the chronicler ascribed his motives to a desire “to increase his dignity.” Many men also wanted to impress the lower orders of society with their rank. Orderic Vitalis's contemptuous tale of one of Henry I's “new men,” Richard Basset, suggests that acquisition of social prestige was a possible motive for marriage. Having married a daughter of the earl of Chester, Basset returned to Normandy “and made a show of superiority to all his peers and fellow countrymen by the magnificence of his building in the little fief he had inherited from his parents.…”

Type
Symposium: Anglo-Norman Elites
Information
Albion , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , Winter 1982 , pp. 258 - 267
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1982

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References

page 258 note 1 William of Malmesbury, History of the Kings of England, trans. Giles, J.A. (London, 1847), p. 289.Google Scholar

page 259 note 2 Vitalis, Orderic, Historia Ecclesiastica, ed. Chibmall, Marjorie, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1969–1976), 6:468.Google Scholar

page 259 note 3 Southern, R.W., Medieval Humanism (Oxford, 1970), pp. 211 and 222–3.Google Scholar

page 259 note 4 Hollister, C.W., “The Misfortunes of the Mandevilles,” History 58 (February, 1973): 18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 259 note 5 For further elements of this picture of medieval marriage, see Cronne, H.A., The Reign of Stephen (London, 1970), p. 168Google Scholar; Stent, Doris M. on, The English Woman in History (London, 1957), pp. 30 and 35Google Scholar; and Michael Sheehan, C.S.B., “The Influence of Canon Law on Property Rights of Married Women in England,” Medieval Studies 25 (1963): 113.Google Scholar

page 259 note 6 Southern, , Medieval Humanism, pp. 214–225Google Scholar; Hollister, , “Magnates and Curiales in Early Norman England,” Viator 8 (1977): 71CrossRefGoogle Scholar and passim. For a more direct application, see Reedy, W.T. Jr., “The First Two Bassets of Weldon—Novi Barones of the Early and Mid-Twelfth Century,” Northamptonshire Past and Present 4 (1969/1970): 241-2, 295.Google Scholar

page 260 note 7 The case of Roger Bigod is an example of the delay between acquisition of wealth and acceptance by one's economic peers. The Bigods had been vassals of Odo, bishop of Bayeux, both before and after the Conquest, but until circa 1075, their cross-Channel holdings were only of moderate size: Loyd, L.C., The Origins of Some Anglo-Norman Families (Leeds, 1951), pp. 14–15.Google Scholar After the rebellion of Ralph earl of Norfolk and Suffolk, Roger received a large portion of the earl's honor from William I (The Complete Peerage, ed. G.E. Cokayne. 13 vols. [London, 1910-1959], 9:575). In terms of English wealth, Roger was now on a par with most magnates, but his wealth was new and English, not old and Norman or Continental. Roger was apparently not accepted until William Rufus's reign. He married the sister of the lord of Belvoir, scion of the Tosny family (Sanders, I.J., English Baronies [Oxford, 1960], p. 12Google Scholar; Complete Peerage, 9:575Google Scholar).

page 260 note 8 Searle, Eleanor, “Women and the Succession at the Norman Conquest,” in Brown, R. Allen, ed., Proceedings of the Battle Conference III 1980 (Ipswich, 1981), p. 163.Google Scholar

page 260 note 9 Ibid, passim.

page 261 note 10 Nigel d'Aubigny, “the landless younger son of a minor Norman baron,” gained prestige and a significant estate by his marriage to Matilda de Laigle, divorced wife of Robert de Mowbray. The importance of the Mowbray connection, even though extremely tenuous in this case, is apparent in the patronymic of his son by a second marriage, Roger de Mowbray (Greenway, D.E., The Charters of the Honour of Mowbray [London, 1972], pp. xvii–xviiiGoogle Scholar). Orderic Vitalis credits the marriage of Nigel and Gundreda, his second wife and the sister of Hugh of Gournay, to the suggestion of Henry I (Vitalis, Orderic, Historia Ecclesiastica, 6:192Google Scholar).

page 261 note 11 Corbett, William J. in the Cambridge Medieval History, (1926), 5:511.Google Scholar Corbett's classifications of wealth recorded in the Domesday survey are as follows: Class A - over £750 per annum (8 men); Class B - £400 to £650 per annum (10); Class C - £200 to £400 per annum (24); Class D - £100 to £200 per annum (36); Class E - less than £100 per annum (90-100).

page 261 note 12 The family came from a village on the river Vire in the Cotentin, about twenty-five miles southeast of Coutances. Aubrey I held lands in 1086 from the bishop of Coutances in Middlesex and Northamptonshire; he (or his father) attested a charter of Count Conan of Brittany dated 1056-66 (Round, J.H., ed., Calendar of Documents Preserved in France [London, 1899], #1168Google Scholar). The bulk of his lands were held of the king in 1086.

page 261 note 13 Domesday Book, 2, folio 101.

page 261 note 14 It has been suggested that Aubrey I served as a royal chamberlain and sheriff. Le Patourel, John, Normandy and England, (Reading, 1971), 30Google Scholar; Davis, H.W.C., et al., eds., Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1913–1968), 2: #576, 651, 695, 707, 929, 996.Google Scholar I have not been convinced that the Aubreys mentioned in the sources holding these offices are, in fact, Aubrey de Vere.

page 262 note 15 The Clares held vast estates in both Normandy and England. For the importance of the Clare family in this period, see Altschul, Michael, A Baronial Family in Medieval England: The Clares 1217-1314 (Baltimore, 1965), pp. 17–28.Google Scholar For Henry I's patronage of the Clare family, see Hollister, , “Henry I and the Anglo-Norman Magnates,” in Brown, R. Allen, ed., Proceedings of the Battle Abbey Conference II 1979 (Totowa, NJ, 1980), p. 100.Google Scholar For Aubrey II's marriage, see the Complete Peerage, 10:198.

page 262 note 16 Le Patourel, , Normandy and England, p. 30.Google Scholar

page 262 note 17 Regesta, 2, #1777.

page 262 note 18 Lambert d'Ardres reports that Emma countess of Guisnes herself selected Aubrey III as her granddaughter's husband. Stapleton, , “Observations Upon the Succession to the Barony of William of Arques” Archaelogia 31 (1846): 228–9.Google Scholar

page 262 note 19 Regesta, 3, #634. Her young son Henry confirmed the offer with his own charter, Regesta, 3, #535. Robert and Geoffrey, Aubrey III's brothers, never actually received their promised baronies.

page 262 note 20 Round, J.H., Geoffrey de Mandeville (London, 1892), p. 392Google Scholar; Hollister, “Misfortunes of the Mandevilles,” passim.

page 262 note 21 The de Veres retained the title of earl of Oxford until 1703.

page 263 note 22 Painter, Sidney, “The Family and the Feudal System in Twelfth Century England,” Speculum 35 (January 1960): 7–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 263 note 23 Dictionary of National Biography, 2: 770.Google Scholar For another example of “coat-tail” social mobility, see Painter, Sidney, William Marshal: Knight-Errant, Baron & Regent of England (Baltimore, 1933), pp. 3–9Google Scholar, for the marriage of John Marshal to Sibyl, sister of upwardly-moving Patrick of Salisbury.

page 263 note 24 Regesta, 2, #1389. Perhaps Geoffrey was worthier of Geva's hand than one might think. He has been identified as a former vassal of Roger the Great, Norman count of Sicily, who disappears from Sicilian records after 1077 and arrived in England before 1086 (Chalandon, F., Histoire de la Domination normande en Italié et en Sicilé, 2 vols. [Paris, 1907], 2:62).Google Scholar

page 263 note 25 Sanders, , English Baronies, p. 49.Google Scholar

page 264 note 26 Hollister, , “Magnates and ‘Curiales’ in Early Norman England,” p. 65.Google Scholar

page 264 note 27 Ibid., p. 77.

page 264 note 28 The bishop of Lincoln, for example, knew what it was like to have royal favor withdrawn. His court cases were lost, his taxes were raised—although nothing major was suffered, such as being imprisoned, it was damaging to the pocketbook and the ego (Southern, , Medieval Humanism, 224–5Google Scholar; Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. T. Arnold [Roll Series, 1879], pp. 299-300).

page 264 note 29 Amieria successively married two sheriffs of the shire. Tait, J., “Introduction to the Shropshire Domesday Book,” Victoria County History of Sropshire (London, 1908), 1:296.Google Scholar

page 264 note 30 Douglas, D. and Greenaway, G.W., eds., English Historical Documents, 2 vols. (New York, 1953–1979), 2:929–30.Google Scholar

page 265 note 31 Painter, , “The Family and the Feudal System,” p. 8.Google Scholar See also the coronation charter of Henry I, English Historical Documents, 2:400.Google Scholar

page 265 note 32 Stenton, Frank, “Norman London,” in Barraclough, Geoffrey, ed., Social Life in Early England (New York, 1960), pp. 182–3.Google Scholar See also Painter, Sidney, “The Family,” pp. 14–15Google Scholar, for a possible Mandeville-de Vere coalition against Clare power in Essex.

page 265 note 33 Cronne, H.A., Reign of Stephen, p. 168.Google Scholar

page 265 note 34 For evidence of Henry I's policy to lure magnates to his court, see Hollister, , “Henry I and the Magnates,” pp. 93–107.Google Scholar

page 266 note 35 Stenton, Doris M., The English Woman in History, p. 40.Google Scholar

page 267 note 1 This list is based on Table 4 in Hollister, and Baldwin, , “The Rise of Administrative Kingship: Henry I and Philip Augustus,” American Historical Review 83 (Oct. 1978): 888.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 267 note 2 Geoffrey Ridel attested only 12 charters before his death in 1120, but his great importance in the royal administration qualified him for inclusion here (see ibid., p. 880).

page 267 note 3 Constance was co-heiress to her father and conveyed his office of chamberlain of the treasury to William upon their marriage. Mason, Emma, The Beauchamp Cartulary Charters 1100-1268, xxvi–xxvii.Google Scholar Nevertheless, this was a union between two curial families.