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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2014
King Henry I “created men,” the novi homines of the chronicles. He also sustained, supported, and rewarded the “old men,” those men, or their descendants, who had held substantial estates in Normandy or in England prior to 1100. The “old men” who remained prominent in the reign of Henry I, however, were those willing to accept his authority, to lay down anarchical broadswords and seek peace through their loyalty to a nascent idea of the Crown, an Anglo-Norman regnum personified in the King. Loyalty was the stern arbiter, and Henry's feudal justice could be deaf to the entreaties of both family members and friends. While military organization was essential to peace and lawful order in Anglo-Norman society, the Conquest was past and soldierly virtue alone was not sufficient; Henry's kingly task was to mold the energies of his barons into administrative and judicial talents, and to cast those talents into a coherent framework of government. The paternal inheritance, as he viewed it, was an Anglo-Norman polity, its ruling class a nobility with cross-channel relationships in estates and blood ties. Whether or not the link with Normandy was deleterious, it was real to the King and his contemporaries, at the heart of the problems of the reign.
Henry drew upon his nobility for the work of governing, but “new men” also rose to prominence. The degree of attention given to the “new men” has created a congregate conception for assessments of the reign.
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2. The fates of Henry I's brother, Robert Curthose, his cousin William of Mortain, and the two daughters of his natural daughter Juliana, wife of Eustace of Breteuil, are often cited as examples of the King's stern justice. After Tinchebrai Duke Robert and Count William were sentenced to lifelong confinement; the punishment of the Count may have included being blinded, and it is possible that the Duke also suffered this fate. Juliana's daughters also may have been blinded, plus having the tips of their noses cut off, as a result of the perfidy of Count Eustace. For the latter story see Vitalis, Ordericus, Historiae Ecclesiasticae, ed. le Prevost, August (Paris, 1838–1855), IV, 336–39Google Scholar. These tales, however, may be seriously doubted. It is unlikely that the punishment of persons in the first rank of the Norman nobility would have included mutilation. See Davis, R. H. C., King Stephen (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967), p. 6Google Scholar.
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91. “Militibus et exteris largus erat; sed pauperes incolas regni sui nimis opprimebat, et illis violenter auferebat quae prodigus advenis tribuebat. Multi sub ipso patris sui proceres obierunt, qui proavis suis extraneum jus bellicose vendicaverunt; pro quibus nonnullos degeneres in locis magnatorum restituit, et amplis, pro adulationis merito datis, honoribus sublimavit.” Ibid., IV, 9.
92. “Nec in vanum illi omnes regis amicitiam acquisiverunt. Nam, qui desideraverunt postestatam terrenam augere, invenerunt; qui pecuniam, pecuniam; qui familiaritatem, familiaritatem; qui utramque, utramque …. Nam sequentis temporis successu ex improviso dedit mihi Exanceastre, cum omni parochia, quae ad se pertinebat, in Saxonia et Cornubia, exceptis cotidianus donis innumerabilibus in omni genere terrestris divitiae.” Stevenson, William Henry (ed.), Asset's Life of King Alfred (Oxford, 1959), pp. 67–68Google Scholar.
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