pumpkinstrokemarrow

This brought on by my persual of 'The Feudal Kingdom of England' by one Frank Barlow, purchased from the Oxfam shop at Sherbourne - a place mentioned in the book, as it happens, as one with a big church and a big castle, both important items in the 12th century. The book is the third volume in a ten volume history of England published by Longmans in the middle of the 20th century. A history which seems to have vanished under the rather heavier Oxford history of the same name. Barlow was a historian of the old school: he tells the story of kings and their friends & neighbours, uncluttered by concerns for women and other toiling masses. And a good story he tells too.

A story helped along with various fold out maps, bound into the book as separate items, produced by hand well before the advent of computer graphics. The only fault being that they do not fold right out and they are not at the end of the book. So one cannot read the book while consulting them, one has rather to flip backwards and forwards. But I suppose it all sticks in the thinning brain cells better that way. Which is just as well, as family relationships were both complicated and important.

I had forgotten, for example, that William I's claim by birth to the throne was better than that of Harold. That there was much intermarriage between the Saxons (home and away sorts), the Normans and the French, although, to be fair, a lot of this was Norman thugs marrying beautiful and noble Saxon heiresses. On two occasions a mid twenties previously married heiress, these ones French as it happens, had to marry a mid teens lordling. One of these marriages (Eleanor of Aquitaine, cast off wife of Louis VII) worked better than the other (Matilda, widow of the Emperor of the Romans). Must run in families as the new husband of the first was the son of the second. Someone in their mid teens counted as an adult in those days but, nowadays, such a union is more or less unthinkable. Baby snatching if not peddary.

Forgotten also how, in those days, the primary allegiance was to one's immediate lord. Society was built out of such incremental arrangements and one had little regard for remoter connections. Countries hardly existed.

In the middle reaches, this seemed to mean that a baron had his knights - this last being a Danish word. Some of these would be quartered in his household for immediate action, others would be out to pasture on their own manors. The upside of this last was that they were not fighting and quarrelling in your hall; the downside was that they were apt to become independent and shake you off. Stopped responding to your trumpet. Much the same system as that of a Saxon lord with his thegns - a word presumably related to the Scottish thane. Barons and their knights were keen on fighting; that was what they were trained to do. So fighting animals, who could reasonably be expected to lose, was popular, although fatal hunting accidents were common, with William II not being the only illustrious victim to the noble sport. But the chances of getting killed hunting were still a lot less than those of getting killed in a serious battle. So battles not terribly popular among the knightly class for all their martial strutting.

Knights were expected to fight from horses. According to Barlow, Hastings was the last English battle where a shield wall was deployed after the Saxon fashion. And, as it turned out, it was eventually ground down by the horsey Normans. But Barlow clearly a romantic; quite enthusiastic about how the shield wall kept on going (Close ranks! Close ranks!), long after all hope of winning was lost, with a good proportion of them being hacked down where they stood. I wonder who stripped the corpses of all the goodies? Did the Normans take the time or did they have to get on with conquering? Stripping being, I believe, normal practise in those impoverished days. Not sensible to bury the tackle with the bodies.

And then there was the church. Which, despite its various faults, was a force for progress. It was religion and the church which pulled the knights back from the senseless savagery of the Vikings. And church which invented education and law, with the conflation of clerk and cleric being evidence of the same.

All in all a good read. Thoroughly recommended.