Note 5 — PART I TERRITORIAL STUDIES (continued 2)

Now this solution of the difficulty will scarcely, I venture to think, bear the test of investigation. It appears to have originated in Dr Stubbs' suggestion that there must have been, between the days of Henry I and of William I, 'some skilful organizing hand working with neither justice nor mercy'5—a suggestion subsequently amplified into the statement that it is to Ranulf Flambard 'without doubt that the systematic organization of the exactions' under William Rufus 'is to be attributed',6 and that by him 'the royal claims were unrelentingly pressed', his policy being 'to tighten as much as possible the hold which the feudal law gave to the king on all feudatories temporal and spiritual'.7 There is nothing here that can be called in question, but there is also nothing, be it observed, to prove that either 'feudal law' or 'military tenure' was introduced by Ranulf Flambard. Indeed, with his usual caution and unfailing sound judgment, our great historian is careful to admit that 'it is not quite so clear' in the case of the lay as of the church fiefs 'that all the evil customs owed their origin to the reign of William Rufus'.8 And, even if they did, they were, it must be remembered, distinctly abuses—'evil customs', as Henry I himself terms them in his charter—namely (in the matter we are considering), 'excessive exactions in the way of reliefs, marriages and wardships, debts to the crown, and forfeiture. In the place,' we are told, 'of unlimited demands on these heads, the charter promises, not indeed fixed amercements, but a return to ancient equitable custom'.9 All this refers, it will be seen, to the abuse of an existing institution, not to the introduction of a new one. The fact is that Ranulf's proceedings have been assigned a quite exceptional and undue importance. Broadly speaking, his actions fall under a law too often lost sight of, namely, that when the crown was strong it pressed, through the official bureaucracy, its claims to the uttermost; and when it found itself weak, it renounced them so far as it was compelled. Take, for instance, this very charter issued by Henry I, when he was 'playing to the gallery', and seeking general support: what was the value of its promises? They were broken, says Mr Freeman, to the Church;10 they were probably broken, says Dr Stubbs, to the knights;11 and they were certainly broken, I may add, to the unfortunate tenants-in-chief, whom the Pipe-Roll of 1130 shows us suffering from those same excessive exactions, of which the monopoly is assigned to Ranulf Flambard, and which 'the Lion of Justice' had so virtuously renounced. I might similarly adduce the exactions from the Church by that excellent king, Henry II (1159), 'contra antiquum morem et debitam libertatem'; but it is needless to multiply examples of the struggle between the interests of the crown and those of its tenants-in-chief, which was as fierce as ever when, in later days, it led to the provisions of the Great Charter. What the barons, lay and spiritual, complained of from first to last, was not the feudal system that accompanied their military tenure, but the abuse of that system in the excessive demands of the crown.