ESSAY III.

THE ANGLO-NORMAN AND ANGEVIN ADMINIS

TRATIVE SYSTEM (1100—1265).

THE essential divergence between the history Character of the of England and that of the continental states English is shown as clearly in the twelfth and thirteenth kingship.

centuries as at other epochs. Beyond the Channel the danger to society lay in the predominance of feudalism, which at first seemed likely to prove fatal alike to royal power and to municipal liberty. On this side of the straits of Dover the fear was that the inordinate development of the authority of the king would reduce all the other elements of the constitution to impotence. Henry I. was obeyed with a punctuality on which no contemporary sovereign of Christendom-save John Comnenus in the far East-could reckon. So firmly had the English administrative system taken root by the middle of the twelfth century, that not

I

Strength of the English administrative system.

even the anarchy of Stephen's reign could break it down. Henry II. was the most powerful king in Europe, not so much from the extent of his dominions, as from the order in which he kept them. Even the weak Henry III., when backed by the forces of administrative tradition, was formidable enough to task the whole energy of the nation in his repression.

What then was the system which rendered the English monarchy so strong, in the days when other states were suffering from the worst evils of feudal anarchy? It was a system the essential principles of which lay in the complete subordination of all the branches of the administration to the royal power, and in the ease and certainty with which that power could make itself felt throughout the land. It reduced the dangers of feudalism to a minimum, by vigorously enforcing the direct jurisdiction and authority of the sovereign over all his subjects, great and small. It drew into. the exchequer all the proceeds of feudal dues and incidents; but it secured, by means of a separate scheme of national taxation, that the king should never be entirely dependent on his feudal revenues. It retained the power of calling feudal levies into the field whenever it might be necessary; but it relied also on a

national militia, raised by the king's own officers, and drawn from the whole body of freemen. By rendering the king independent of the support of his baronage both in military and fiscal matters, it took away the two great levers by which the forces of feudalism could hope to overturn his throne. Consequently it required something more than a revolt of the tenants-in-chief to curb the tyranny of a John or end the misgovernment of a Henry III. To prevail over the royal power, the baronage had to ally itself with the nation; and when Magna Carta was exacted and confirmed, it was not feudalism which profited. There resulted from the victory not a relapse into anarchy, but the establishment of a new form of constitution, in which neither the king nor the baronage held undisputed sway. From the reign of Edward I. onward, the Commons no less than the sovereign and the greater nobility, have an appreciable influence on the conduct of affairs.

Let us now turn to the details of this administrative system, which made the King of England master in his own land, after a manner of which continental rulers could have no conception.

Council.

As the supreme legislative and judicial body The Great in the realm, we have the King's Great Council, which carries on in a measure the traditions of

the old English Witepagemot. But while the Witan had been essentially national, and had possessed in all matters a power almost co-ordinate with that of the king, the new Great Council gradually grew into a semi-feudal body of the tenants-in-chief of the crown. No violent break appears between the two institutions, because the bishops and landed magnates who would naturally have appeared at the Witenagemot were precisely the same persons as the great tenantsin-chief who came to the Great Council. The lesser tenants-in-chief, who in theory were summoned to the Great Council as much as their more important compeers, did not in reality present themselves. Thus the assembly, though gathered on a new theory, presented an appearance very similar to that of the body which it replaced. Three times a year, on the great Church festivals of Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, the Anglo-Norman king summoned his Great Council around him, and "wore his crown in public" at the solemn session. His projects, legislative and financial, were laid before the assembly, and passed by its "counsel and consent;" while the more important judicial cases, which had by process of appeal come up to the highest tribunal of the realm, were tried and decided by the same body. Even greater importance attached

to the Great Council as the body which chose the king. The reigns of all the four AngloNorman kings opened with a disputed succession, and the successful prince in each case insisted, not on his hereditary right, but on the fact of his election. It is true that the councils which elected Henry I. and Stephen were mere shadows of the bodies which they purported to represent, hastily summoned and meagre in numbers, yet on their authority rested the claim of the newly chosen king. A ruler whose title was bound up with the rights of the assembly which had crowned him could not avoid perpetuating the elective theory of kingship—a theory which goes far towards mitigating absolutism. The French kings who for eight generations passed their crown on in hereditary succession from father to eldest son, were for the moment, indeed, powerless before their baronage; but by the undisputed transmission of the royal power for so many years they caused the fact that the French throne was elective, no less than the English, to pass into oblivion; and thus laid up for their descendants claims of divine right which could not be foisted on England.

The Great Council could not always be in The Curi Regis. session, yet there was continually needed some