The decades after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 were a time of tremendous political and administrative upheaval, which saw the transformation of many Anglo-Saxon institutions, including the church and, to a lesser extent, the courts. In consolidating his rule over an unfamiliar kingdom, whose language he did not speak, William the Conqueror relied heavily on his bishops. Initially content to allow incumbent bishops to continue in post, in 1070 William changed strategy and deposed five bishops who had especially close ties to powerful pre-Conquest families. These he replaced with men from the continent, several of whom had already served as chaplains in the royal chapel. During the rest of his reign, William continued to appoint bishops who had been educated at prestigious cathedral schools on the continent before serving for a period in the royal chapel.   

By the time of his death in 1087, the king had assembled an impressive episcopal bench in England, full of men of proven loyalty and exceptional administrative abilities. The Conqueror’s bishops played a crucial role in the establishment of the new Anglo-Norman regime, as did two bishops of Norman dioceses — the king’s half-brother Odo of Bayeux (at least until his imprisonment in 1082 or 1083) and Geoffrey, bishop of Coutances. They served the king as royal justices and administrators, tutored his children, led military expeditions on his behalf, and played an important part both in the coordination of the Domesday survey of 1086 and in the effective functioning of the legal system of the day, through their role presiding over meetings of the shire court. It is this last responsibility which forms the main subject of this piece.[1]

William I inherited a kingdom in which the shire was already established as the standard territorial subdivision for administrative and fiscal purposes, except in the far North. Its court was of fundamental importance in local government. The principle that the shire court should meet twice a year was enshrined in the mid-tenth century in the Andover law code of King Edgar, which also specified that the bishop and the ealdorman of the shire should preside over the assembly, as representatives of sacred and secular law respectively. This code also decreed that no one should take a plea to the king unless his own lord had refused, or been unable, to do right by him. This provision was expanded during the reign of King Cnut, whose surviving law code stipulated that a man might not take his plea to the shire court until he had demanded justice three times in the hundred court, and must never take any dispute to the king’s court which could be resolved in a lower court. Even in the tenth and eleventh centuries it would seem that there were concerns about the higher courts being overwhelmed by frivolous challenges.

Although pre-Conquest law codes suggest that an apparent hierarchy of courts already existed in England by the mid-eleventh century, in practice it might not always have been readily apparent where a case ought to be resolved. This potential ambiguity can be observed in legal historian Patrick Wormald’s discussion of a dispute in 990 between a nobleman, Leofwine, and a noblewoman, Wynflæd, over lands in Berkshire.[2] In this instance, Wynflæd wished to take her case directly to the king but Leofwine insisted upon it being heard in the shire court of Berkshire. Eventually the shire court was convened to hear the plea, Bishops Æthelsige of Sherborne and Æscwig of Dorchester presided, the king sent his seal with the abbot of Bath, and Wynflæd ultimately won. The case illustrates the successful functioning of an Anglo-Saxon shire court, but also how, despite the promulgation of royal law codes, there might still be some confusion as to whether it was the correct forum for certain disputes to be aired. It is also striking that the account of this plea records two bishops presiding alone, without a secular lord alongside them.

The shire court in this period performed a wide variety of judicial and social functions. It was a forum for litigation, certainly, but also a place where arrangements were made for the collection of taxes, where men might be outlawed, where business transactions might occur, or marriages be arranged. It was thus in the interests of every landholder, great or small, to be in attendance at the court, or at least to make sure he (or more infrequently she) was represented there.

Despite the centrality of the shire court to Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman government in the localities, however, it is difficult to obtain a complete picture of how the institution functioned in practice during the turbulent years after 1066. Two possible facets of its operation are presented in contrasting, but not incompatible, reconstructions by Richard Sharpe and Nicholas Karn. In his pioneering 2003 article on ‘The Use of Writs in the Eleventh Century’, Sharpe gave a clear account of how a type of document known as a writ-charter might have been requested and obtained by a beneficiary, delivered to the shire court and there read aloud to the assembled company, before being returned to the beneficiary, who could choose whether to retain the document.[3] The process Sharpe envisaged was a sophisticated and systematic one, initiated at the request of beneficiaries but firmly controlled and directed by royal government at the centre. Karn, by contrast, presented shire courts as potentially chaotic forums which ‘were not designed for the efficient processing of business sent to them from on high, but rather seem often to have found decision-making difficult. Their importance does not derive from their usefulness to kings, as a means of imposing policy and decisions, but from their usefulness in debate.’^[4]

It is possible to reconcile these interpretations to some extent. We may accept that kings had a sophisticated administrative mechanism at their disposal, in the shape of writs and writ-charters, while also recognising that the institutions to which documents were directed might sometimes have operated in a rather unruly fashion. It is also probable that a good deal of routine business was carried out smoothly and uneventfully in local assemblies but has left no trace in narrative accounts and documentary archives concerned with recording and preserving the exceptional. Nevertheless, the tension between the two readings may reflect an actual tension in the shire courts of the eleventh century, between the governmental objectives of the king on the one hand and political circumstances on the ground in the localities on the other.

The Conqueror’s reign was an important period in the development of the shire court, with the loss of many of the earldoms which had characterised the political geography of pre-Conquest England. From the middle of the tenth century until the reign of Edward the Confessor, bishops and ealdormen or earls had habitually presided over the court together. The old Anglo-Saxon earldoms did not disappear entirely after the Conquest, nor were all of their English incumbents immediately removed. Nevertheless, English earldoms diminished in number and altered in nature over the ensuing decades. No longer was every county and every shire court necessarily presided over by an earl, as they had been during Edward the Confessor’s reign.

Where earls vanished, however, bishops continued to appear, presiding over meetings of the shire court long after their secular counterparts had ceased to do so. They occur occasionally in narrative accounts of shire court proceedings but most of the evidence for their involvement comes from contemporary royal writs. These were short documents in epistolary form, authenticated by the king’s seal and usually contained some kind of notification or injunction for the recipient. Or they might be writ-charters, which took a similar form but conferred land or rights on their beneficiary. Because these documents took the form of letters, and most historians agree they were intended to be read out in the shire court, their address clauses provide useful clues as to which officials usually presided over meetings of the court.

The origins of the writ in England may lie as far back as the ninth century. They were certainly in habitual use by Anglo-Saxon kings by the late tenth century, alongside longer and more formal documents known as ‘diplomas’, although the earliest surviving examples date from the reign of Cnut in the early eleventh century. The reign of Edward the Confessor saw the proliferation of writs, which quickly supplanted the more unwieldy diplomas. After 1066 diplomas to English beneficiaries all but disappeared. By contrast, the writ flourished and performed an increasing range of functions. A number of supposed writs of William I are in fact forgeries dating from the mid twelfth century onwards, mostly from the abbeys of Westminster and Battle. The eagerness of twelfth-century forgers to produce counterfeit royal writs, as well as spurious diplomas, demonstrates that writs were considered important enough to be worth forging.

David Bates’ edition of the charters of William I, Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, contains 171 writs or writ-charters, of which thirty-one are outright forgeries.[5] During my PhD research I analysed these writs for the individuals or groups to whom they were addressed and their language of composition. The main impression which emerged was one of variation, with practices far from standardised. Groups and individuals in late-eleventh-century landed society appear in a wide variety of combinations and sometimes it is difficult to identify for certain the office which a particular addressee held. For example, Gamel, son of Osbeorht, appears alongside Earl Morcar in a writ of 1067 × 1069 granting land to Beverley Minster in Yorkshire. His appearance in this context suggests that Gamel was probably the sheriff of Yorkshire at this date but this writ is the only evidence that he ever occupied the office.

Variation and occasional uncertainty notwithstanding, it is possible to gain a general sense of what proportion of the surviving writs of William the Conqueror featured different kinds of people. Of all the office holders addressed in these documents, bishops appear in the greatest numbers. Ninety of the 140 writs which are certainly or potentially authentic include a bishop or bishops among their addressees, a proportion of 64.3% or a little under two-thirds. Sheriffs are the second most prolific group, with eighty-four appearances. Earls appear thirty-seven times, and two early writs, in favour of the abbeys of Bath and Westminster, include a type of Anglo-Saxon official known as a ‘staller’ among their addressees, apparently taking the place of the earl.

Bishops, then, appear in a majority of extant writs of William I, though by no means in all. Several factors may have affected the likelihood of a bishop being among the addressees of any given writ. In some cases, he may have been omitted from a document because it detailed a grant, or the outcome of a plea, which ran contrary to episcopal interests and which the bishop in question might therefore have wished to obstruct. Such may be the case in a writ of 1081, addressed to Roger Bigod, the sheriff of Norfolk, notifying him of the resolution of the long running dispute between the local bishop, Herfast of Thetford, and the abbot of Bury St Edmunds. The king informed the sheriff that he and his leading magnates had heard the case and decided in favour of Abbot Baldwin, and ordered that the bishop should make no further claims upon the church of St Edmund. Bishop Herfast must have been informed of the outcome of this plea, if indeed he was not present when the decision was made, but in the context of a protracted and acrimonious dispute such as this one, it makes sense that the sheriff alone should be addressed and that the king should charge him, as a neutral party and royal representative, with enforcing the outcome.

On the other hand, there are those documents where the bishop himself, or his cathedral church, was the beneficiary. This did not necessarily preclude him from also being an addressee, but it did make it less likely. Forty authentic or potentially authentic writs in favour of episcopal beneficiaries survive, of which just over half include a bishop among their addressees (lower than the two-thirds figure for the total corpus). Of the twenty-one writs where bishops do appear, six are addressed to the beneficiary bishop, seven more generally to ‘episcopis’ or ‘archiepiscopis’, four to the bishop of the diocese where the land being granted was located, and a final four to a named bishop who is neither the beneficiary nor the diocesan for the shire in which the grant was made.

Of these categories it is perhaps the last group which is most interesting, demonstrating as it does the part that might be played by bishops in the local politics and administration of areas beyond the boundaries of their own dioceses. Two of these writs are addressed to Archbishop Lanfranc and indeed it makes sense that a writ might be directed to the archdiocesan bishop in cases where the diocesan bishop was either the beneficiary of a grant or involved in a dispute in need of resolution. However, two other writs demonstrate that, in exceptional circumstances, ordinary diocesan bishops might be addressed about business which had nothing to do with their own dioceses. Both are connected with that most extraordinary of events: the Domesday survey.

One is a writ issued by Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances, acting in a vice-regal capacity, and addressed to Remigius, bishop of Lincoln, and several other nobles, informing them of the outcome of a dispute between the bishop of Worcester and the abbot of Evesham. This writ is undoubtedly connected with the role of these men as Domesday commissioners in the West Midlands, which is recorded in a late-eleventh century account of a Worcestershire Domesday session by a monk from Worcester cathedral named Hemming. The function of this document was not to effect a grant or settlement in itself, but to provide the commissioners with information which was of use to them in the performance of their commission. Hemming makes it clear that it was not directed to a routine meeting of the shire court but to an extraordinary assembly which occurred at the time ‘when the king ordered the whole of England to be described’.

A second writ dealing with the grant of Bishop’s Stortford castle to Bishop Maurice of London is addressed to Bishop Osmund of Salisbury and the sheriffs of Oxfordshire and Essex. This grant must have been made after Maurice’s appointment as bishop at Christmas 1085 and presumably before King William’s departure for France in the autumn of 1086. Great Domesday Book tells us that Maurice held land at Stortford but makes no mention of the castle. It is therefore possible that the grant was made some time during 1086, after the first stage of the survey was completed. Unlike the Worcestershire example, it does not seem to be explicitly connected with the Domesday survey.

The language of the writ is Old English rather than Latin, even some fifteen years after King William had adopted Latin as the normal language of written communication with his key officials. However, there is considerable evidence that the shire courts were still operating in English some forty years after the Conquest. This may, therefore, be a rare surviving example of a once numerous body of Old English writs, which continued to be issued to shire courts after the apparent 1070 transition to Latin as the language of central government.

If this is to be interpreted as a writ designed to be read in the shire court, however, it raises questions about which shire is being addressed, and why Bishop Osmund should appear to have presided over an assembly which must have occurred outside his own diocese and was not explicitly part of the Domesday survey. Is it possible that, as a consequence of the unavoidable upheaval that the survey must have caused, and the forced itinerancy of some of the most important men in the country, shire court meetings during the first half of 1086 might have been presided over by whichever ecclesiastical or secular magnates happened to be on hand, so as to avoid an eleventh-century court backlog?

This flexibility regarding who William entrusted to preside over local courts is further reflected in the number of his surviving writs which are addressed to some combination of Archbishop Lanfranc, Geoffrey of Coutances and, less frequently, Odo of Bayeux and Robert, count of Mortain. This select group of men were William’s closest advisors and most capable administrators. At least until the disgrace and imprisonment of Odo in 1082 or 1083, each of them stood right at the heart of the king’s council. Two, Odo and Robert, were his half-brothers. Three were bishops, though only one presided over an English diocese. At different times both Odo and Geoffrey issued writs on behalf of the king, acting in an effectively vice-regal capacity.

William seems to have employed this ‘task force’ of powerful and experienced men in situations which were too urgent, complex or delicate to be resolved through the usual channels of local government. Such is the case in a series of writs in favour of the abbey of Ely, addressed variously to Lanfranc, Geoffrey of Coutances and Robert of Mortain and datable to 1081 × 1087, during which period the abbey was in a customs dispute with Bishop Remigius of Lincoln. Sometimes members of the ‘task force’ were explicitly charged with resolving disputes over jurisdiction between bishops and neighbouring abbeys, as in a Worcester writ of 1078 × 1085 demanding that Lanfranc and Geoffrey settle a disagreement between Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester and Abbot Walter of Evesham and specifying that Geoffrey should preside in place of the king. In other cases, there are writs which do not directly address a dispute but still refer to circumstances which have arisen because of it, such as an instruction that the abbey of Ely should be allowed to take repossession of various lands in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Essex.

William issued an increasing number of these ‘task force’ writs during the later years of his reign, a fact which might seem to support Nicholas Karn’s suggestion that the shire court was rather an unwieldy forum for resolving disputes, structured as it was to facilitate debate more than decision. It may have become increasingly apparent to the king that the shire courts, so well adapted to the routine business of eleventh-century government, were not fully equipped to deal with some of the more protracted and complex disputes which arose in the turbulent years after the Conquest. It is a testament both to William’s political judgement and to the flexibility and utility of the writ as an instrument of royal government, that he was able to counter extraordinary circumstances with specific instructions to some of his most powerful and competent men.

Does it necessarily follow that the individuals addressed in a writ were actually present at the shire court to hear it read out? It is true that bishops are the most frequently addressed group of people in the surviving writs of William I. Yet even in cases where the subject of a writ was a straightforward grant of property or privileges, the addressees did not always include the bishop/s for the shire, or shires, where the property was situated.

Sometimes, for example, when the beneficiary institution and the property being granted were in separate shires, writs seem to have been addressed to the relevant archbishop, as though the matter had been referred higher up the ecclesiastical hierarchy. A general confirmation of all the lands and customs of St Mary’s of Abingdon, probably issued shortly after the accession of Abbot Adelelm in 1071, was addressed to Archbishop Lanfranc and the relevant sheriffs for the shires where the abbey held land – that is Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Warwickshire and Gloucestershire. At this time Berkshire was part of the diocese of Salisbury, Oxfordshire part of the diocese of Lincoln, Gloucestershire split between the dioceses of Worcester and Hereford (though mostly in Worcester), and Warwickshire between the dioceses of Worcester and Lichfield. The abbey, then, held land in many different dioceses and it makes sense that this confirmation of its possessions should be addressed to the archdiocesan, rather than to each of the diocesan bishops in question.

However, the anonymous author of the abbey chronicle provided an account of this writ being read out in the shire court of Berkshire and this raises questions about the purpose of the writ and the reasons for the identity of the addressees. Was this a routine or an extraordinary meeting of the shire court of Berkshire, and did Archbishop Lanfranc actually preside over it in person? Was the writ also read in other shire courts? If so, why did the Abingdon chronicler only mention Berkshire? Lanfranc himself was also omitted from the account of the writ being read at the shire court. These questions remain unanswered, and perhaps unanswerable in this instance, but they are a salutary reminder that the presence of an individual in the address clause of a writ is not a guarantee of his presence in the shire court at its reading.

Bishops were busy men, with many competing demands on their time. It is highly likely that, the address clauses of writs notwithstanding, they were sometimes unable to attend meetings of the shire court and that their places were taken by deputies. This was also the period during which archdeaconries began to be established on a significant scale, including the earliest territorial archdeaconries, with archdeacons assisting bishops in a variety of spiritual and pastoral duties. By the time of Bishop Remigius’ death in 1092, the vast diocese of Lincoln had seven territorial archdeaconries, each of which corresponded with a particular shire: Lincoln, Huntingdon, Northampton, Leicester, Oxford, Buckingham and Bedford. While I was able to find no specific references in contemporary sources to an archdeacon presiding over the shire court in place of a bishop, it seems highly likely that they did sometimes deputise for bishops in secular as well as ecclesiastical affairs, especially in cases where the boundaries of an archdeaconry corresponded with the boundaries of a shire. It is possible therefore that some of the surviving writs addressed to diocesan bishops were actually delivered to assemblies at which they were not present, and where their place was taken by a deputy, perhaps an archdeacon.

Nevertheless, the different types of writ that continued to coexist throughout the Conqueror’s reign indicate a legal and administrative system built on solid and lasting foundations, but which was also responsive to the political needs of the moment. Traditional practices obviously continued, and probably more widely than surviving documents would suggest. The Old English writ concerning the grant of Stortford castle to Maurice of London was clearly directed towards some kind of assembly operating in the vernacular, despite the fact that the three named addressees were all Normans. It seems almost certain that more vernacular documents like the Stortford writ have been lost and that the surviving impression of Anglo-Norman administration is therefore skewed towards new and innovative forms and practices, at the expense of older and more conservative ones.

The Conqueror, meanwhile, seems to have been prepared to rely on existing structures where they were useful to him, and to devise alternative systems where traditional ones failed. The shire court system, and the simplicity and flexibility of the royal writ as an instrument of government, offered the English king a direct channel of communication with the localities, of a kind which was unparalleled in contemporary Europe, while his network of trusted bishops provided him with a competent and well-educated civil service of sorts. Moreover, unlike secular magnates, bishops left no legitimate heirs and had no independent power base derived from hereditary lands, and the king could ultimately appoint their successors to further cement his power in the provinces. More than any of his continental contemporaries, King William looked to his bishops to help him navigate the political and administrative challenges of consolidating his rule over a foreign and sometimes hostile kingdom. The Conqueror’s bishops played a profound role in almost every aspect of the law and government of England.

[1] A more detailed and fully-referenced discussion of this subject can be found in Chapter 2 of my PhD thesis, Clerks and Commissioners: The Role of Bishops in the Government of England, c.1050–1087 (Unpublished PhD Thesis, King’s College London, December 2017).

[2] Patrick Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, Volume I: Legislation and its Limits (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), pp. 151–2.

[3] Richard Sharpe, ‘The use of writs in the eleventh century’, Anglo-Saxon England, 32 (2003), 247–91, pp. 251–3.

[4] Nicholas Karn, ‘Centralism and local government in medieval England: constitutional history and assembly politics, 950-1300’, History Compass, 10 (2012), 742–51, p. 747.

[5] David Bates, ed., ‘Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum’: The Acta of William I (1066–1087) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).