451 – The Lucky Few

Welcome to the British History Podcast.

My name is Jamie, and this is episode 451: The Lucky Few.

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You know, I almost titled the last episode, The Gang Goes to a Funeral.

The trouble was that the gang didn't go to a funeral.

All of them decided they had somewhere else to be.

And Orderic, who's our main source for this whole embarrassing affair, actually ends his seventh book speaking for multiple paragraphs about the spiritual and practical implications of such a miserable end.

I think I might do a full reading of it in our next shop talk, but Orderick sums himself up nicely in this quote, quote, there is but one lot for rich and poor.

Both become the prey of death and corruption, end quote.

Basically, you can't take it with you and you're going to end up exactly in the same place that that poor guy down the street is going to end up in.

And during his post-funeral summation, Orderk kind of sounds like like Dickens describing Ebenezer's Scrooge.

And he tells us that William's greed and his cruelty had bought him this really humiliating end.

And frankly, it sounds like the old monk was absolutely here for it.

But speaking about Scrooge, Rufus was now taking possession of the royal treasury, and that thing was absolutely stocked with cash.

William obviously had a lot of shortcomings, but he was extremely gifted at finding ways to transfer wealth from the poor and the powerless all the way up to himself and the other members of the new Norman aristocracy.

And I know that a lot of you have been anticipating a new round of culturally focused episodes.

Because, you know, new ruler, new culture, right?

Well, you're not wrong.

And consider this episode the first Norman culture episode.

And it's all about taxes.

And I know you are probably anticipating something more along the lines of like medieval duck Larange, right?

And we will get to stuff like that, but we have to start with taxes and tax policy.

Because money, who's allowed to have it, who it gets taken from, and how it moves around is one of the legs of the stool of power.

And power is ultimately what shapes culture.

And I'm guessing that most of you have already noticed that we've actually touched upon this throughout this series.

But we really need to get get deep into it here.

Because when bastard William dies and is replaced by red-headed William, what could have been a blip becomes the new ruling order.

And I know that this might feel like we're paying even more attention to the kings and their nonsense, but even though it's the elites who are making these decisions, They're deciding the lives of everyone else.

And the average person felt the impact of these decisions acutely.

Let's take an an example from our own modern economy.

In addition to governments, we also have private megacorporations.

And if one of these megacorporations raises the price of bread in order to increase its stock value by three cents, that isn't just an isolated decision that only affects the consumer buying the bread and the megacorporation's new record profits.

It also has huge knock-on effects.

The thing is that food is one of the things that economists like to call an inelastic good, which is just a funny way of saying it's a thing that people really need, and so they'll buy it regardless of the price.

You might buy less fancy versions, but you're still gonna buy it.

And the same goes for other necessities like shelter, medicine, heating, clothing.

All of these are inelastic goods.

You have to buy these things even if someone decides to jack up the price.

Because the alternative is, well,

death.

So if the price of food goes up, you're not going to stop buying it, but you might stop buying anything else.

And that means that as that megacorporation enjoys record profits and applauds their CEO, other parts of society find themselves struggling to exist.

And suddenly, your favorite bookstore is closing, or your favorite show is canceled, or your family member is forced to move to a cheaper town.

What What began with just a change in the price of bread radiates out and all manner of other parts of life begin to change as well.

And as such, culture changes.

So while money doesn't feel like culture, the way money is extracted and who it is extracted from drives and constrains culture.

So this treasury that William Rufus was taking control over, as well as where its contents came from and where it would be going, was a titanic cultural mover and shaker.

So, first things first, where did all this money come from?

Well, it starts with William's implementation of the Herregeld in 1067, less than a year after the Battle of Hastings.

Now, the Harrage translates to the army tax.

And this wasn't the first time that England had one of these.

However, the practice had been abolished by Edward the Confessor nearly two decades earlier in 1051.

And yet, the year after the Battle of Hastings, William was bringing back the tax and also bringing back its enormous revenue.

And you might be thinking, well, okay, a king gets himself some cash through a tax.

What of it?

Well, tax policies are about a lot more than just revenue generation.

They're also used to incentivize certain behaviors that the government likes, like giving tax breaks to retirement accounts, and also also disincentivizing behavior that the government doesn't like, like increased taxes on cigarettes.

Essentially, taxes can be used to pick winners and losers.

And granted, in a perfect tax world, the money that's gathered would go to things that everyone needed.

You make collective tax payments for collective needs, things like fire departments and the like.

But the 11th century was not a perfect tax world.

And William was collecting a huge amount of cash through taxation in his new feudalizing England.

And he wasn't obligated to use those funds to pay for collective projects that everyone needed.

Far from it, in many cases, that cash was being handed out to specific individuals who William wanted to reward or people that he wanted to gain the loyalty of.

And as a consequence, those lucky few inevitably gained power.

Likewise, those who were being taxed were losing some of their wealth and, subsequently, their power.

And I'm sure this won't surprise you at all, but those who were paying the tax and those who collected the tax were two completely different kinds of people, because William was carefully granting some people an exemption from these new payments.

You see, when William revived the Harrigal, he was able to claim that he was merely re-implementing a long-standing English type of revenue generation.

But despite all of his pretenses of inheritance, William didn't inherit England.

He was a conqueror, and while he claimed he was interested in restoring things to how they were under Edward, he had actually no intention of doing that.

And that reality, along with these taxes, was a real problem for the English churches in particular.

Because over the 11th century, the various English kings had granted the various churches and religious institutions of England exemptions from this or that kind of tax or toll.

And this had gone on for so long that the 12th century chronicler of the laws of Edward the Confessor believed that all churches, including parish churches, were entirely exempt from taxes by the time of King Edward.

But when William brought the Harrigal back, those exemptions didn't necessarily roll over.

Instead, they needed to be re-granted, likely on a case-by-case basis.

And by treating exemptions as a matter of debate rather than an established precedent, the floodgates for privileged tax status were suddenly opened.

And so they weren't just discussing whether or not a previous exemption would be applied to the present.

They were also discussing who would get brand new exemptions for their duties and their taxes.

And as for which officials would get these waivers?

Well, it was whoever William wanted to give them to.

I mean, he was the king, and under this formulation of the law, he could just grant exemptions to anyone he wanted to for pretty much any reason.

And often, these exemptions went to his allies, his friends, or other strategic partnerships.

And here is where the doomsday book becomes very important, because it gives us a detailed window into who is being taxed in William's England and also who wasn't.

And that last part is critical, because when we look at the doomsday book, we find exemptions on a massive scale.

Now, unearthing specifically who paid and who didn't is a monumental task.

And thankfully, heroic historians like Sally Harvey have done most of that work for us.

And so we can see exactly what was going on here.

And what she and others have found in the shires that they studied was that those at the very top of the property ladder were extracting much higher sums from their tenants and their freeholders than they had been collecting prior to William's takeover.

So revenue was through the roof, kind of.

You see, it also appears that these same high-ranked landowners were themselves paying much less in taxes than they had done under the previous Anglo-Saxon rulers.

And the reason for this was likely due to those special exemptions that William was passing out like pills at a rave.

And thanks to the Doomsday Book, we can really get down to the specifics here.

For example, we know that Bishop Odo barely paid any taxes at all on his substantial landholdings in Surrey.

And historian David Bates notes that when looking through the records, it looks like a lot of these powerful landowners were still collecting the money for the Hera Guild, but then they just pocketed it, while others don't appear to have bothered collecting it at all.

So generally, it looks like William was issuing exemptions to wealthy and powerful supporters as a way of rewarding past service and also incentivizing continued loyalty.

He was giving them a stake in the game, and specifically, a stake in his continued dominance of that game.

The downside of all of this becomes quite clear when you look at how much money was actually gathered.

For example, when William issued a guild of six shillings in 1084, Historian Sally Harvey estimates that given the number of exemptions, it probably would have amounted to only about £9,000.

Now, for comparison, during the reign of Canute, the Chronicle reports that his guild collected £83,500.

So functionally, what we're seeing is a massive reduction in taxes.

And it's not hard to see why this might be a problem, but actually, it gets extra sticky at this point.

Because remember, William did want money.

And given the size of his treasury, he clearly got it.

So the question is raised, how?

Well, when we look at his policies and frankly, the complaints surrounding his rule, we can see what happened.

William was granting exemptions for service and taxation among specific favorites, but he was also adding burdens to other communities to make up for those losses, both in normal taxes and also requirements for service, like military service.

For example, we have records of English monasteries complaining about severe burdens of service that William was placing upon them.

And when we look at the Doomsday Book and elsewhere, we see evidence that this was a widespread practice.

Free and dependent peasants found themselves placed under onerous taxes at the very same time that their new Norman overlords were being granted exemptions.

We see people living in towns being subject to a direct monotagium tax, which is ostensibly a tax to produce coinage.

But when we look at the rates of taxation, we see that they go way beyond what they were before William.

So he's jacking these rates up.

And as a result, the townsfolk are being absolutely squeezed.

So we're not just looking at the revival of old defunct taxes like the Harrigal.

William's approach to taxation was a widespread campaign to shift the burdens of running the kingdom away from his Norman favorites and towards the English.

And William wasn't the only one hammering the English in the pocketbook.

His inner circle was also getting in on the game.

When we look at the records of rent, we see evidence of price gouging by the new Norman elite.

These landlords were able to take advantage of the relative lack of mobility of English life and the fact that without land, a family would be without food or shelter.

And they jacked up the rates.

Because honestly, what were the English gonna do?

You gotta pay it.

This is an inelastic good.

And this got bad enough that we eventually see this in version E of the chronicle.

Quote, the king and the principal men greatly loved and over greatly greed and gold and silver and did not care how sinfully it was got as long as it came to them.

End quote.

Historian David Bates interprets this passage as directly related to this suite of wealth transfer policies, saying, quote, when exemption from tax is considered alongside the transfer of burdens onto free and dependent peasants and the many mentions in Doomsday Book of manners rented out at a level above their value, then it's easy to see what the author had in mind, end quote.

Typically, when we talk about the conquest, we talk about land seizures, and those did certainly impoverish the vast majority of the English elite.

But it was these tax and service policies that were striking at the pocketbooks of pretty much every Englishman, not just those at the top.

And this was all happening at the same time that a select group of insiders, chosen by William, were getting phenomenally wealthy, both by receiving gifts of land and cash and also through the exemption of having to pay for these ruthless tax policies.

Because this went well beyond simply keeping more of their money.

If you have an exemption from these taxes, then you're able to use those windfalls to produce even more wealth.

You can invest in a new farm.

You can get more sheep.

And as a consequence, your income is growing.

And being able to do this while others are struggling merely to stay even gave the new invading elite class a massive structural advantage.

And so these taxes and the way that they were implemented exacerbated and cemented inequality.

And that power transfer from the English to the Normans radically altered the lives of everyday people.

But that being said, William was also careful to ensure that as he broke up the land and distributed it to his followers, and as he handed out exemptions, he did it in such a way that he was also ensuring future rivalry among the favored.

Because rivalries and competition among the Norman elite meant that none of them would be able to rival him or his heirs.

England's domains were broken up such that none of the new aristocrats would be able to attain the level of wealth and power that the House of Godwin had obtained.

And this is what I mean when I say that taxes are about more than revenue.

They're also about power.

And William was transferring wealth and power away from the English, but he was also pitting the barons against each other, thus ensuring that ultimate power remained with the crown.

So when Rufus walked into that treasury, he was looking at more than just gold and silver.

He was looking at the result of a massive wealth transfer drawn from average people and given to the wealthiest man in the entire kingdom.

It was a very real physical example of the new feudal order that was being imposed upon England.

And the chronicle describes it like a scene out of Aladdin.

Quote, it was impossible for anyone to describe how much was accumulated there in gold and silver and vessels and costly robes and jewels and many other precious things that are hard to recount, end quote.

And when you look at the things that they're describing, things like robes and vessels, you get a sense of where some of that wealth had come from and why the monks writing down these accounts took the time to document all these boring tax policies.

Because those were their clothes and their valuables at one point.

Okay, so now that we know more fully where all this wealth came from and the cultural and economic situation that was being carved out with it, that leaves the question, now that Rufus was king, what was he gonna do with it?

After all, that's a huge amount of money.

Well, here's the thing.

Even though dear old dad left Rufus with a huge amount of cash, that didn't mean he could do whatever he wanted with it.

Well, I mean, I guess technically he could, but it wouldn't be wise.

This ruthless pattern of extraction through taxation and rent gouging had created a situation where the majority of the public were less than thrilled with their new nobles.

And Rufus was a guy that they barely knew, and here he was taking over.

Even worse, what they had heard about him probably wasn't great.

Rufus had a reputation of being a bit of a rebellious libertine, not to mention a wild man.

And this reputation was so strong that we still know the details of how that dude peed on his older brother.

So there was probably quite a bit of anxiety about how Sir Vodka and Red Bull was going to behave now that he was King William II.

Especially as the English hadn't exactly loved King William I.

And that anxiety was not a minor matter.

This population had spent almost all of the last 21 years either actively rebelling or planning the next rebellion.

Even worse for Rufus, the idea of him sitting on the English throne probably didn't sit all that well with a bunch of the Norman elite either.

Many of these guys had property on both sides of the channel, and as such, they had a vested interest in the success of the House of Normandy.

Specifically, a unified House of Normandy.

But that was all coming apart at the seams.

Normandy had been handed over to the eldest son, Robert, and here was the younger son, Rufus, nabbing England.

So the fledgling empire was on the verge of breaking apart.

And for the Norman elite, that would have put their wealth in danger.

And it never goes well when the rich feel that their wealth is under threat.

And it gets even worse when those rich men are comfortable committing violence and already have their own castles and even their own military forces.

Honestly, getting Landfrank to agree to crown Rufus was the easy part.

Now that Rufus was wearing the crown came the real work because he was on the verge of war right from the outset.

But he wisely understood that you don't fight fire with fire.

The Chronicle tells us that Rufus, in the face of this threat, mobilized the treasury.

First, he sent 100 pounds to every shire in the kingdom with instructions that it was to be distributed among the poor.

Next, he aimed to pacify the clergy, sending 60 pence to each country church.

And to the powerful minsters, he sent either 10 marks of gold or 6 marks of gold.

You know, depending on the minster.

And I'm guessing that politics and power were ultimately what determined which minsters got the 10 versus which got the six.

But Rufus was just getting started.

We also have other records that inform us of additional payments, like Florence of Worcester telling us that Rufus selected some of those minsters to receive an additional share of church ornaments, crosses, altars, shrines, books, candelabra, vases, cruettes, and other valuables.

From the sounds of it, the bastard had emptied out most of the churches in England because that treasury room was apparently nuts.

We also see Rufus providing other select institutions with large land grants.

And on top of that, he added a few sizable endowments of even more relics and precious items.

So clearly, some religious communities here were big winners.

But this was done exclusively through the king's orders.

There wasn't any law or even any consistent policy here.

So while some churches gained significant wealth, others didn't.

And that left a bad taste in the mouth of those who got the short end of the stick.

And it can even be seen in surviving documents.

Because the lucky holy friends of Rufus talked about how they felt they'd been treated really well.

And then we have other communities, like the Abingdon monks.

And they were pretty sure they got totally screwed.

And what little they did receive didn't even come close to what had been lost.

So Rufus was picking winners and losers, just like his father had done.

And that gave him direct leverage over England's religious institutions, who, in turn, exerted influence over the English public.

And when we look at the wealth specified in these gifts and compare it to the number of churches, minsters, and shires in England, we can do some rough math about what this courting campaign cost the Royal Treasury.

Historian Frank Barlow estimates that Rufus provided payments of approximately 8,600 pounds in total.

Now this number admittedly excludes the fancy ornaments and other endowments, which are much harder, if not impossible, to value.

But overall, we're looking at about 8,600 pounds.

And to get a sense of scale here, remember that William's youngest son, Henry, had been given £5,000 as his inheritance.

And actually, thanks to the material in the Doomsday Book, we also know that Rufus would have been able to replenish all the lost funds with a single tax of just four shillings per hide of land.

So these gifts hardly broke his bank.

And in exchange for these payments, which were officially given as a humble request to pray for the soul of William the Conqueror, but were functionally for the security of his new reign, well, in exchange, Rufus was able to position himself as a chivalrous, charitable, and pious king.

And he was able to do it on the cheap.

Rufus had come into the crown with the reputation of being a knight's knight.

He was voracious in appetites and quick to violence.

But Rufus was now basking in the gratitude of powerful churches and minsters, not to mention the poor peasantry who had received some of the payments that were sent out to every shire.

So suddenly, his reign was seen as a much-needed improvement on England's whole situation.

Now, it's very easy to sit where we're at today and say, come on, guys, you know he's just buying good PR here with your own stolen possessions, right?

And that is entirely correct.

However, the fact was that these people had been through a lot, and it was probably a relief simply to see a king who wasn't celebrating his reign by burning down the nearest city or prying the gold cross off the wall of the nearby church.

Instead, this new guy was actually out here handing out presents.

So I could totally see why the people were happy here.

And Rufus had bought himself a honeymoon.

He was also surprisingly deft at how he handled the aristocracy in England and how he handed out important administrative duties.

You see, William had reigned for 21 years, and Rufus had spent a sizable chunk of that time planning what he would do if he became king.

As such, Rufus would have spent a lot of the last decade or so gathering buddies, allies, and frenemies, all of whom he thought could help him implement his reign, or, you know, fight for it if things didn't go his way.

And honestly, coming in with your own retinue and installing them everywhere was pretty much standard for this period of history, especially if the new king was in his 30s and had spent such a long time just waiting.

Furthermore, Rufus was Rufus.

This guy famously had attitude and confidence to spare.

So if anyone was going to kick in the front door and shout, you're all fired, losers.

I got my own crew and they're way cooler than you.

It was probably going to be him.

But that's not what he did.

Instead, while Rufus positioned himself as a new and much more positive direction when he was dealing with the common folk and the clergy, He took the opposite tactic when dealing with the noble powers, and he carefully established himself as a a continuation of his father's rule.

As such, those inner circle positions didn't go to his bros.

Instead, he took on William of St.

Calais, who was now the Bishop of Durham, and also Robert Bigot, which I'm assured is actually pronounced Robert Bigot, but that's not how it's spelled.

And actually, small aside here, Bigot essentially translates to by God.

And in addition to being a Norman surname, it was also an insult that the rest of France used against the Normans.

It's essentially just a local slur.

But it's also possible that this is at least one of the origins for the 16th century use of the word bigot, which originally meant someone who is an overly religious, sanctimonious prick.

And we'll watch how that one develops.

Anyway.

So this new inner circle of advisors weren't Rufus' fellas.

We don't see them in the records riding around with him when he was a knight and pissing off villagers and pissing off balconies.

No, these guys were William's guys, which again was how he was signaling to the nobility that his reign was a continuation of his father's reign, which had made them all so incredibly rich.

Though, to be fair, Bigot hadn't just been close with William.

He was also close to Odo.

So, uh, you might want to keep an eye on that guy, Rufus.

Rufus also tied himself to William by bringing over Gerard, the bastard's chancellor for Mouen, and he installed him in office in England.

And this move was actually pretty brilliant, because in one shot, Rufus managed to deny Duke Robert a valuable ally while also further demonstrating to the Norman elite that they should put their faith in him, because he was the person best positioned to continue his father's work.

When it came to the nobility, Rufus didn't want any daylight between his reign and that of his father's.

And this plan went much farther than advisors.

Rufus kept on the sheriffs who had served under William.

And this would have been a strong message, as they were the people who were directly carrying out the king's will.

We also see no signs of upheaval in the record, which suggests that this policy of keeping previous officers went well beyond the sheriffs.

Hell, he even had the same name as his dad.

I mean, I use it rarely because there are just so many Williams in Norman life.

And so, by calling him by his nickname, Rufus, things are a lot less confusing.

But yeah, he had the same name, and he wielded that to his advantage.

William Rufus even kept his father's seal.

Well, you know, most of it.

His dad was listed as both the King of England and the Duke of Normandy, which Rufus obviously couldn't do, so he instead was just listed as the King of England.

But other than that, it remained pretty much identical.

He didn't even bother to indicate that he was a different William by adding a moniker or a number or any indication that he was junior or younger.

No,

he was just King William.

And he did the exact same thing with his coins as well.

So if you weren't up on current events and you mostly learned about politics through the change in your pocket, which was the most contact with the king that most people had, you would be forgiven if you didn't know that there was a new king and that the last William had actually exploded in Khan.

Now, there is another argument that floats around as additional evidence that Rufus was presenting himself as a continuation of the bastard.

And this argument is that Rufus didn't issue a charter of liberties at his coronation.

But there's a problem with this argument.

The Charter of Liberties is a document that's issued at the coronation which binds a king to certain duties and laws.

Now these laws are about how the new king intends to treat the nobility and the church and the public.

And Barlow argues that the fact that Rufus didn't have one issued at the beginning of his reign was a sign that he was simply continuing the laws of his father.

And that sounds reasonable until you realize that in 1087,

no charter of liberties had ever been issued.

The first time that one's drafted up is actually by Rufus' successor, and it was as a direct response to the problems of Rufus' reign, because spoiler, there are gonna be some problems here.

But ultimately, that's just a small mistake, and it's the sort of thing that's easy to make when doing the work of history.

It's why timelines and chronology is so important.

But ultimately, even if the Charter of Liberties doesn't exist yet, the fact is there is a ton of evidence that Rufus was doing as much as he could to bind his rule to that of his father to gain the goodwill of his new subjects.

And into this situation came Bishop Odo, Rufus' uncle.

Now, Odo had only been recently released from prison on William's orders, though given that he ended up attending that cursed funeral, I wonder if he wished he stayed in jail for a week or two longer.

Anyway, after being released and attending the worst funeral in history, Odo was restored to his Norman properties by Duke Robert.

And looking at the record, it seems that Odo and Robert were probably pretty close here, which isn't a great development for Robert's rival, Rufus, but it's also not necessarily the end of the world either.

Uncle Odo was a bit of a problem, so I guess let him be Robert's problem.

Then, before you knew it, it was Christmas, and Rufus decided to kind of break with tradition and stay in London this year so he could keep an eye on things.

He was, after all, a very new king, and things were a bit shaky.

And when you look at the holiday witness list, once again you see that Rufus was keeping his father's men very close to him.

He really was doing all he could to project that he was a continuation of that rule.

But we also see someone else on that list who's a bit of a surprise.

Uncle Odo.

Apparently, he'd left the court of Duke Robert and had decided to visit his other nephew, the king of England.

And because this was Odo, it wasn't a social call.

You see, the properties in Normandy weren't the only ones that were seized from him.

He also had some nice English properties.

And

he'd like them back, please.

And that put Rufus in a very tough spot.

Odo was shady as hell, and he was already linked to one attempted mutiny, not to mention an unacceptable amount of theft and fraud.

Even worse, a chunk of those English properties would have to come from Canterbury, and Odo and Lanfrank, the Archbishop of Canterbury, weren't exactly buds.

So you can only imagine how Lanfrank, who was also Rufus' tutor and advisor, felt about this whole situation.

Unfortunately, King William the Redhead couldn't just blow him off either.

Despite how shady Odo was, Rufus didn't have a personal beef with his uncle.

That imprisonment and the seizure of lands had to do with things that were done to William and Lanfrank, not him.

Furthermore, Odo held political and financial power over a number of Rufus' nobles in a time when the new king very much needed friends rather than enemies.

Add all of this to the fact that William had actually pardoned Odo.

And granted, he'd done it reluctantly and kind of under duress, but he still had done it.

So if Rufus treated his uncle harshly, he would some crazy how manage to make himself look even more cruel and ruthless than William did.

And besides, if we're countermanding dad's orders, then that might create some problems for Rufus since one of those orders was, you know, that England should go to him.

And I'm guessing he'd already used his one freebie when he re-imprisoned Wolfnoth and Morcar.

So he probably shouldn't push it.

Consequently, Rufus, probably after conferring at length with Landfrank, decided to restore Odo to his English properties.

And Odo, newly restored, began to work on the next phase of his plan.

Because surely, his nephew knew that he wasn't going to be satisfied with some grassy knolls and a few sheep.

Come on, he was bishop finging Odo.

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