Domesday Book: England written down, 1085–1086
At Christmas 1085 William I ordered the survey that became Domesday Book. During 1086 royal commissioners gathered evidence from groups of counties, questioning landholders, officials and jurors assembled in local courts. They asked who had held each estate before 1066, who received it after the Conquest, who held it when the survey was made, what land and other resources it contained, and how much income it produced at different dates. Clerks wrote down the answers in Latin.
The survey reached from the estates of great earls, bishops and abbots to small rural holdings. Domesday recorded ploughlands, meadow, woodland, watermills, fisheries, salt workings, churches and taxable values. It also distinguished villagers, smallholders, dependent workers and enslaved people. The household figures generally counted heads of households, with wives, children and other dependants living behind the names and categories entered by the clerks. Landholding had been transformed since the Conquest. In the Domesday entries, the king’s leading tenants appear above the men who held land from them, and the commissioners measured the resources from which each lord drew payments, food and services. Fields were described by the plough teams they could support; woodland was often assessed by the number of pigs it could feed. A mill brought income from grinding the grain of neighbouring farms, while a fishery supplied food and sometimes rents or tolls.
The records were kept in royal custody and used in later disputes over land, dues and privileges. Domesday acquired its name from the finality associated with judgement. For the Western Weald its entries describe the communities, farms, rivers, mills and churches from which later villages developed. The commissioners’ lists reveal the scale of local estates even when an individual farm, clearing or hamlet had yet to receive its own written name.
Arundel, Pulborough and Petworth in the survey of 1086
The Domesday entry for Arundel recorded a borough with burgesses, a mill and a fishery. Its annual value had risen considerably since 1066, and payments from burgesses, milling and river resources contributed to Roger de Montgomery’s income. The castle stood above a town whose crossing and river traffic linked coastal trade with the estates farther north. Pulborough and Petworth were also recorded among the estates held in chief by Earl Roger of Shrewsbury, the same Roger de Montgomery who controlled Arundel. The commissioners described substantial communities in which fields, woodland, meadow and water supported agricultural work.
Pulborough was recorded with sixty-six households and eighteen ploughlands. Thirty acres of meadow supplied hay and grazing, while woodland was assessed as sufficient to support twenty-five pigs. Ox teams pulled ploughs across the cultivated ground; two mills ground grain from the surrounding fields; and two fisheries provided fish from the River Arun and associated waters. The entry also listed two churches. The river and the roads of the Arun valley connected these farms and mills with other settlements and the lord’s estate administration.
At Petworth, Domesday recorded forty-four households and twelve ploughlands. The estate possessed twenty-nine acres of meadow, woodland assessed for eighty pigs, one mill and one church. In autumn, pigs fed beneath oak and beech trees on acorns and mast, a practice known as pannage. Woodland also provided underwood for fencing, timber for building and fuel for heating and cooking. The mill processed grain beside a managed water supply, while hay cut from the meadow helped maintain livestock through winter.
These figures represented communities of unequal landholdings and obligations. Some tenants possessed enough land or livestock to play a substantial part in cultivation; others worked much smaller plots and depended upon wages, customary rights and service for their lord. A plough team needed several oxen and people capable of managing them. Hay had to be cut at the proper season, dried and stored, and grain had to reach the mills after harvest.
One of Pulborough’s two recorded churches is associated with Wisborough Green, where the west end of St Peter ad Vincula belongs to the late eleventh century.
Shalford and its Wealden pasture at Alfold, 1086
The Domesday commissioners also recorded an estate in Surrey whose lands reached south towards the future settlement of Loxwood. Shalford lay about eight miles north of Alfold. Long before the Norman Conquest, its owners had held grazing and woodland in the Weald beyond the main fields of the manor. Alfold developed from this detached southern pasture and had become part of the holding later known as East Shalford. The old roads followed the length of the estate. From Shalford a route ran south through Wonersh, with branches towards Cranleigh, Ewhurst and Alfold. People used these droveways to take animals into the Weald for seasonal pasture. Pigs could feed on woodland mast, and cattle grazed on suitable ground while the northern farms used their nearer fields for cultivation. As land was cleared, families occupied more of the southern holdings throughout the year and extended fields into former pasture.
Before 1066 Shalford had been held by two unnamed brothers. Each occupied his own house, but they shared one court for the estate. By 1086 Robert de Watteville held Shalford from Richard fitz Gilbert, a major Norman tenant-in-chief whose descendants became the de Clare lords. An unnamed man-at-arms also held part of the Shalford property, connecting land tenure with the military obligations of Norman lordship. The commissioners counted twenty-nine villagers, sixteen smallholders and eleven enslaved workers. They recorded three watermills, four acres of meadow and woodland dues assessed at twenty pigs. The whole holding was valued at £20 a year. These were figures for the wider Shalford estate, including its distant resources in the Weald, rather than for Alfold alone.
Domesday listed one church under Shalford. That entry has been identified with St Nicholas at Alfold, whose attachment to East Shalford appears again in later medieval documents. The church served families living in the southern holding. The place-name Alfold, meaning ‘the old fold’, preserved the Old English word for an established livestock enclosure; the name is first recorded centuries later in a record of 1227.
The working year in the Western Weald
The farmers described in Domesday worked fields cut out of woodland and heavy clay. Autumn brought ploughing and sowing, winter required the care of livestock and stores, and spring demanded further cultivation as the ground became workable. In early summer families cut and dried grass for hay. The grain harvest came later, followed by the gathering of fruit, vegetables, nuts and woodland produce. Cattle supplied traction and milk, sheep provided wool and meat, and pigs converted acorns and beech mast into food. Poultry and smaller animals added to the supplies of individual households. Livestock needed shelter and feed during the cold months, and bad weather could delay the movement of both animals and harvested crops.
Rain softened the tracks of the Low Weald and cut deep ruts into the clay. Heavy carts moved more easily along firmer ridges; fords, bridges and causeways determined where travellers could cross streams and wet ground. Packhorses carried smaller loads through places unsuitable for carts. A farmer moving grain to a mill, or timber to an estate centre, had to take account of the season and the condition of each stretch of road.
Woodland rights were valuable. Estates and tenants controlled access to pasture, pannage, firewood and timber according to local custom, while courts settled disputes over use and boundaries. Large oak trunks provided beams for halls, barns and churches. Underwood could be cut for fencing, hurdles, small repairs and fuel. A tenant who possessed a right to gather wood or graze animals could depend upon that right as much as upon a cultivated field.
Houses, tools and household work
Most rural houses were built from materials available nearby. Oak frames or posts set into the ground supported walls of timber and clay, with roofs of thatch or wooden shingles. A hearth provided warmth, cooking heat and light. Benches, stools, chests, tables, cooking pots and bedding furnished the principal living space, while barns and smaller shelters protected grain, tools, fodder and animals. Much of a household’s work took place beside its living rooms. People brewed ale, baked bread, processed milk, spun wool and repaired clothing. Gardens supplied vegetables, herbs and fruit, and preserved foods helped carry families through winter. At harvest, additional hands were needed to cut, bind, carry and store grain before rain spoiled the crop.
Smiths sharpened or repaired iron blades, made hinges and nails and supplied fittings for harness and agricultural equipment. Carpenters worked timber into carts, roofs, chests, plough parts and doors; wheelwrights repaired vehicles damaged on rough tracks. Potters supplied cooking vessels, while leatherworkers made shoes, belts and harness. The work of these craftsmen could be called upon by a small tenant, a parish priest or the officers of a great Norman estate.
Parish priests marked the principal stages of family life. They baptised children, heard confessions, celebrated Mass, blessed marriages, visited the sick and buried the dead in consecrated ground. Cathedral and monastic clergy maintained longer daily sequences of worship known as the Divine Office, singing psalms and reciting prayers and readings at appointed hours. The Bible used in formal church services was the Latin Vulgate. Priests read passages aloud from the books available to their churches, while psalms, Gospel readings and prayers formed the words heard repeatedly during worship. A complete manuscript Bible was costly to produce because scribes wrote its text by hand on parchment. Smaller churches more commonly possessed the books needed for particular services, including Gospel books, psalters and books of Mass texts.
Priests also instructed their congregations in spoken English. Old English homilies and biblical explanations survived alongside the Latin language of formal worship and the French increasingly used by the ruling families. Paintings, carving, crosses, music and processions helped people understand biblical stories and the ceremonies of the Church. The font stood near the entrance to many churches, with the congregation occupying the nave and the priest conducting Mass at the altar in the chancel.
The Christian year gave different duties to different seasons. Advent preceded Christmas; Lent brought fasting before Easter; Pentecost commemorated the descent of the Holy Spirit; and saints’ days honoured the patrons and other holy figures of the Church. During Rogation processions, clergy and parishioners went out into fields and lanes to pray for the growing crops. Bells summoned worshippers from scattered farms, and the principal feasts drew households who might otherwise seldom meet. Churches received tithes, offerings, rents and income from endowed land. Grain and other produce could go to a priest or monastery as a tithe while rent went separately to a lay lord. The income provided bread and wine for Mass, altar lights, vestments, books, repairs and alms. Priests lived among the agricultural communities whose crops and animals supported them, and travelled to the bishop’s church when they required ordination or official instruction.
William II and the Norman inheritance, 1087–1100
William I died in 1087. The English crown passed to his second son, William II, known as William Rufus, while Normandy passed to the elder son Robert. Their younger brother Henry received a monetary inheritance. England and Normandy now had separate rulers, but Norman families held property and maintained relationships on both sides of the Channel. Ships carried nobles, merchants, clergy, letters and goods between the two territories. William II governed through sheriffs, royal courts and the revenue available from the Crown’s estates. Domesday Book supplied a detailed account of landholding, while the king’s officers collected payments from counties and tenants. Castles guarded strategic crossings and estate centres, and lords who had received land during the Conquest passed property and obligations to their heirs.
The king also took the income of bishoprics and abbeys while appointments to them were vacant. Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, died in 1089, and the archbishopric remained unfilled until 1093. During those years its estates supplied income to the Crown. William then appointed Anselm, a distinguished scholar and abbot from Normandy, as archbishop. Their disputes concerned the ownership and income of church property, episcopal appointments, papal authority and the limits of the king’s control over the Church. These arguments reached beyond Canterbury. A bishop controlled the ordination and discipline of priests, while a king could influence the appointment of bishops and the income of their estates. Norman lords also possessed rights of patronage over churches on their property. When a priest died, a patron might put forward his successor, who then required the bishop’s approval and ordination.
Wisborough Green and Alfold build in stone
At Wisborough Green, the late-eleventh-century western end of the nave of St Peter ad Vincula stood among farms, woodland holdings and small clearings. Its thick walls gave the Sussex congregation a permanent stone building for worship. Constructing it required quarried stone to be carried to the site, lime to be burned and mixed for mortar, oak for the roof and doors, and the work of masons, carpenters and smiths. The priest served under the Bishop of Chichester. Across the Surrey boundary, St Nicholas at Alfold served the southern part of the Shalford estate. Its earliest stonework belongs to the decades around 1100, at the close of William II’s reign and the beginning of Henry I’s. The small building had a nave for the congregation and a short square chancel containing the altar. An early Norman font, which survives, provided a place for baptism. Alfold belonged to the Diocese of Winchester, so its priest answered to a different bishop from the clergy at Wisborough Green.
The church buildings had to be furnished and repaired after construction. Service books and vestments were valuable possessions; candles required wax; and the roof needed timberwork capable of resisting the weather of the Weald. Fixed seating was limited and many worshippers stood in the nave, while the priest celebrated Mass in the chancel. The hours of worship followed the Christian calendar and daylight. Matins could be said early, the principal Mass later in the morning, and evensong in the afternoon. Bells gave people time to travel from dispersed holdings. Easter communion, patronal celebrations and the greater feasts brought the fullest gatherings. The paths followed by parishioners linked the churches with neighbouring farms, fields and woodland clearings.
At Chichester, Bishop Stigand’s episcopate had ended, and Ralph Luffa became bishop in 1091. He took charge of the cathedral works begun after the transfer from Selsey, ordained priests and supervised the churches of Sussex. His long episcopate extended through the last years of William II and most of Henry I’s reign.
Henry I takes the crown, 1100
William II died in 1100, and his younger brother Henry secured the English crown. Henry had grown up within the royal family established by the Conquest and inherited the sheriffs, courts, castles and royal estates through which his father and brother had governed England. He issued charters and writs, ordered officials to perform particular duties and required money owed to the Crown to be accounted for. A royal writ was generally a short written command. It might direct a sheriff to restore land, enforce a right, summon people to a court or recognise a grant. The clerk who wrote it used Latin, but the business it ordered could concern a tenant’s holding, a mill, a road or a payment. The men who received the writ had to carry it out among landholders and local communities.
Royal government depended increasingly upon people who could read, write and keep accounts. Bishops, cathedral chapters and monasteries educated many of the clerks who worked for the king and great landowners. The same skills served a bishop issuing instructions to his priests, a lord recording a conveyance of land and a royal officer demanding payment from a sheriff.
Arundel Priory and the Abbey of Séez, 1102
In 1102 a Benedictine priory was established at Arundel beside the castle and borough. Roger de Montgomery had granted land and rights in churches to the Abbey of Séez in Normandy and provided a site for a dependent community in his Sussex lordship. Gratian, a monk of Séez, became its first prior. The monks followed a regular pattern of worship. They gathered to sing psalms, read Scripture and recite the prescribed prayers through the day and night, and they celebrated Mass in their church. Books, altar vessels, vestments and candles were required for these services. The priory’s buildings also needed food, fuel, clothing and maintenance, supplied through its estates and the work of tenants, servants and carriers.
The priory was an alien house because its parent abbey stood in Normandy. Its monks and officials corresponded with Séez, and the religious customs of the Norman abbey travelled across the Channel with its members. Sussex estates supplied the community’s food, rent and labour. Grants to religious houses could include the right to present a priest when a parish church became vacant. This right, known as advowson or church patronage, connected the income and appointments of individual churches with their patrons and monasteries. A monk or steward dealing with church rents and property might travel between a priory, a lord’s residence and the farms from which payments were due.
Arundel Castle and the priory stood close together above the Arun. The castle housed the lord’s officers and armed household; the priory’s monks worshipped in their church and managed the income granted to their community.
Henry in Normandy and the settlement with Anselm, 1106–1107
Henry’s rule extended across England and Normandy after he defeated his elder brother Robert in 1106. Norman noble families, churchmen, merchants and messengers crossed the Channel with letters, money and goods. Ports on the Sussex coast served traffic bringing wine, salt, cloth and other supplies into the county. Inland roads carried them towards Arundel, Chichester and the houses of landholders who possessed property on both sides of the sea.
In 1107 Henry reached an agreement with Archbishop Anselm over the appointment of bishops and abbots. Bishops and abbots received spiritual authority through the Church, while the king retained a part in the arrangements surrounding appointments and the secular property attached to their offices. The settlement addressed a dispute inherited from William II’s reign. The agreement governed the appointment of bishops; individual parish priests were appointed through the rights of their patrons and the authority of diocesan bishops.
Chichester Cathedral is consecrated, 1108
In 1108 Bishop Ralph Luffa brought the Norman cathedral at Chichester to consecration. The building provided a great stone church for the diocese whose bishop had moved from Selsey after the Council of London in 1075. Its nave, transepts, choir, sanctuary and chapels accommodated the canons, clergy and people who came for the cathedral’s ceremonies. The canons maintained the Divine Office, singing psalms and prayers at successive hours. In the choir and sanctuary they used manuscript books, altar vessels, vestments, candles and music for the services. Cathedral property supplied rents and produce to maintain the building, the clergy’s houses, hospitality and the people employed in the cathedral precinct.
Priests from the Sussex countryside travelled to Chichester for ordination. They returned to their churches with the bishop’s authority to celebrate Mass and administer the sacraments. Decisions concerning clergy, church property and buildings were carried to them by written instructions or officials, connecting the rural congregations of the Weald with the cathedral and bishop.
The fire at Chichester Cathedral, 1114
In 1114 a serious fire destroyed the wooden roof of Chichester Cathedral and damaged the eastern part of the building. Bishop Ralph Luffa directed the repairs with royal assistance. Timber had to be selected and carried into the city, damaged stonework rebuilt, and scaffolding erected so that carpenters, masons and smiths could work above the cathedral floor. The fire struck only six years after the consecration. The canons needed the damaged church made safe for their daily services, while the bishop’s household and cathedral officers had to find money, organise materials and supply the craftsmen engaged upon the roof and walls. The rebuilt sections became part of a cathedral already maintained by rents, estates and gifts from patrons throughout Sussex.
Alfold Castle is built beside St Nicholas
During Henry I’s reign, as cultivation spread across the southern holdings of East Shalford, builders raised a substantial earth-and-timber castle at Alfold. It stood on gently sloping ground above a small stream valley, on the site later called Lindon Farm in Rosemary Lane, immediately beside St Nicholas. The church served the settlement, while the fortified residence housed the lord’s household or his officers within the Watteville lordship. The castle stood on the higher ground above the land falling away to the south. Farms and pasture lay around it, reached by the tracks that led towards neighbouring Wealden settlements and the old route north to Shalford. Rent, produce and instructions could be brought to a resident official without requiring every tenant to travel the whole distance to the parent manor.
Builders laid out a ringwork, a defended enclosure roughly rectangular in shape with rounded corners. The area inside measured about forty-five metres from north to south and forty-five metres from east to west. Around it they dug a substantial ditch, approximately seven metres wide and reaching three metres in depth. Earth dug from the ditch was heaped along the inner edge to form a bank, above which stood a palisade of heavy upright timbers. A controlled entrance allowed people and carts to pass through the defences. A ringwork provided a defended residence within a compact area, with its ditch, earth bank and timber wall enclosing buildings and the people who lived and worked in them. Labourers had to cut through the ground, move spoil and shape the bank, while carpenters prepared large timber posts and joined the structural framework.
Beyond the ringwork lay a much larger outer enclosure, or bailey, measuring approximately 135 metres by 90 metres. It extended particularly towards the west and south and had a further ditch around it. Within that enclosed space the household had room for working yards, livestock, fodder, agricultural stores and the carts and packhorses arriving from farms. The outer enclosure accommodated the daily movements of people and supplies while the inner defences protected the principal residence.
Oak was used extensively. Large stakes from the waterlogged ditches belonged to the timberwork associated with the defences. Another structural timber bears a mortice, the rectangular socket cut by a carpenter to receive a joining piece. The oak was felled in the earlier twelfth century. Water in the ditches subsequently preserved the timber after the structures were dismantled and buried.
The household and the business of Alfold Castle
The hall was the principal room of a Norman lordly household. There the lord or an officer received visitors, dealt with estate matters and ate with members of the household. Kitchens, places to store grain and other provisions, servants’ accommodation and shelter for horses and livestock supported these activities. Food came from the farms, meadows and woodland controlled by the estate. Tenants paid rents in money or produce and fulfilled customary obligations to work on the lord’s land. An officer at Alfold could receive what was owed, organise labour, account for supplies and arrange repairs. The household needed workers to clean and maintain the yards, care for animals, unload carts and protect stores from damp and vermin. Smiths and carpenters repaired gates, roofing, equipment and harness, using timber and iron supplied through the estate.
Some decisions affected several holdings at once. Land cleared from woodland needed an agreed boundary; pasture rights determined where animals could feed; and tracks had to be kept accessible for people driving livestock or carrying rents to the castle. The lord’s court gave tenants and officers a place to deal with duties and disputes attached to their land.
St Nicholas stood just outside this defended centre. The roads that brought people to the church for services also linked the farms with the lord’s officers. One household might have business at the castle over a rent or boundary and later attend Mass at the church. Alfold belonged to the Diocese of Winchester, while the Sussex communities farther south, including Wisborough Green, were governed through the Bishop of Chichester.
Kirdford and the spread of stone churches
At Kirdford, the church of St John the Baptist was built with an early twelfth-century nave. Herringbone masonry survives in its walls, together with a blocked south doorway from the first stone building. The church stood close to the River Kird and a crossing, where paths converged from farms and small settlements scattered through a broad wooded territory. The congregation gathered in the nave for Mass, and the font provided for baptism. The churchyard served burials, while the dedication to St John the Baptist gave the community a patronal feast near midsummer. Travellers from the surrounding holdings used the river crossing, and the same tracks brought priests, worshippers and the bishop’s officers towards the church. The south doorway was blocked during a later alteration to the church.
Bishops Ralph Luffa and Seffrid I, 1123–1125
Bishop Ralph Luffa died in 1123. Seffrid I became Bishop of Chichester in 1125. He inherited the cathedral, its clerks and canons, and responsibility for churches distributed across Sussex, from the coast and South Downs to the Western Weald. The bishop and his officials dealt with the appointment and conduct of priests, disputes involving church property and the requirements of worship. In the neighbouring Surrey Weald, the Bishop of Winchester exercised equivalent authority at Alfold.
The owner of a manor could possess the advowson of a church, giving him the right to present a priest when the benefice fell vacant. A monastery could acquire that right through a grant, as happened with churches attached to religious houses after the Conquest. The bishop then examined the candidate’s suitability and provided the necessary authority to serve the congregation. This connected a village priest with both the patron whose land supported the church and the bishop who supervised his ministry. A priest’s income might include glebe land, tithes, offerings and customary dues. His glebe needed cultivation, and he might rely on neighbours or servants for some of the work. He read the Latin books required for Mass and the sacraments while explaining the Christian faith in the language spoken by his congregation. The houses of parish clergy and the fields belonging to their churches formed part of the same farming communities as the surrounding tenants.
Church buildings drew support from patrons and parishioners. A patron could give land or rights to provide an income; local people contributed labour, produce or money for maintenance. Roofs, walls, doors and furnishings needed repair. Wax supplied lights, bread and wine were required for Mass, and the service books and vestments were valuable property that had to be protected and replaced when worn.
The manor organised a different set of obligations. A tenant could be required to attend the lord’s court, pay rent, work on demesne land or observe rules governing grazing and woodland. Sheriffs and royal courts dealt with matters beyond the manor, while the bishop’s courts handled questions concerning clergy and other church business. One tenant might owe labour to the lord, tithes to a church and payments demanded through royal taxation.
Monasteries and cathedral households gave hospitality and alms, and priests visited sick parishioners and conducted funerals. These duties brought the clergy into contact with families outside the great feasts and Sunday services.
The Exchequer and the Pipe Roll of 1130
Henry I required sheriffs and other royal officers to account for the money due from counties and royal property. The Exchequer became the place where these sums were examined, with clerks checking receipts, debts, allowances and payments made on the king’s behalf. The work depended upon records that could be compared from one accounting period to the next. The Pipe Roll of 1130 is the earliest annual account from this system. Domesday Book had described the ownership and resources of the kingdom in 1086; the Pipe Roll recorded money for which officials were answerable under Henry I. Sheriffs, who dealt with the Crown’s income in the shires, had to explain both what they had collected and what remained due.
Clerks trained in cathedral and monastic households supplied skills needed by the Crown, the bishops and the great landowners. A written grant could preserve a gift of land to a monastery, a charter could set out a tenant’s rights, and a royal writ could require a sheriff to carry out a judgement. Officials travelled with these instructions between the king’s courts, county centres, castles, monasteries and estates.
Stephen and Matilda contest the crown
Henry I died in 1135. His nephew Stephen secured the English crown, while Henry’s daughter, the Empress Matilda, pursued her own claim. Leading landholders divided their allegiance between the two, and rival forces fought for control of castles, roads and territories. A sheriff’s ability to collect revenue or enforce the king’s orders depended upon the men who controlled the districts through which he travelled. Norman castles now had importance in disputes over the succession. Their gates, stores, garrisons and defended approaches gave their holders a place from which to protect a lordship or resist an opponent. Roads linking a castle to its estates carried horses, food, carts and messengers. The same resources that maintained a household in ordinary years could be demanded more heavily when armed men gathered or moved through the country.
In 1139 the Empress Matilda arrived in England to press her claim to the crown. She was received at Arundel Castle by Adeliza of Louvain, Henry I’s widow, and Adeliza’s second husband, William d’Aubigny. The castle established under Roger de Montgomery during William I’s reign had become a residence capable of accommodating a royal claimant and her attendants. Arundel’s position above the River Arun connected it with coastal arrivals and the roads leading inland. Boats and carts could bring supplies towards the castle from the river and borough, and messengers could travel onwards to the estates and strongholds of the surrounding counties. The motte and defences offered protection to a household whose political allegiance mattered to the struggle for the throne.
Receiving Matilda and her party required the ordinary machinery of a great residence on a larger scale. Servants prepared chambers and places to eat; cooks and brewers needed flour, meat, ale and fuel; and grooms required fodder, water and shelter for horses. Stores had to be opened and replenished. Officers responsible for the castle’s estates could draw upon rents and produce, while carriers moved provisions along the river and the roads.
During the twelfth century Arundel Castle acquired a stone shell keep around the earlier motte. Successive holders adapted the Norman fortification into a more substantial residence and stronghold, while the motte remained at its centre. The site retained the advantages that had attracted Roger de Montgomery: a strong position beside a river crossing, a borough and routes into western Sussex.
Church courts and the law during Stephen’s reign
Seffrid I was Bishop of Chichester in the opening years of Stephen’s reign. His cathedral canons sang the daily services while episcopal officers heard disputes over property and supervised the clergy. Around 1140 a scholar named Gratian, distinct from the first prior of Arundel, brought together and organised a major collection of canon law. His work supplied scholars and church judges with texts through which they examined questions of clerical conduct, marriage, church property and other matters placed before ecclesiastical courts. Its use spread as clerks and judges received training in the developing law of the Church.
A marriage dispute could concern the validity of a union or a promise, while a dispute over a tithe could involve a priest, a patron and the tenants of an estate. Church courts relied upon testimony, records and trained officials. Their decisions affected property and family obligations as directly as the judgement of a manorial court affected landholding or customary labour.
Bishop Hilary and the cathedral close, 1147
Hilary became Bishop of Chichester in 1147, succeeding Seffrid I. In the same year William d’Aubigny granted the cathedral quarter in Chichester to the see. The grant strengthened the bishop and chapter’s possession of the close, where the cathedral, canons’ houses and episcopal buildings stood within the city. These properties provided places for residence and administration beside the church in which the canons performed their daily services.
The rights attached to church property required clear records. Bishops and cathedral chapters could receive land or privileges from lay patrons, and the wording of the grant determined what could be occupied, let or passed on. A clerk writing such a grant had to identify the people involved and the property conveyed, just as the officers of lay estates recorded rents and tenures.
The last years of Stephen and the settlement of 1153
The struggle between Stephen and Matilda placed demands upon the people responsible for farming and provisioning castles. Armed men and horses required grain, meat, hay and shelter. Estates depended upon ploughing and harvest at the proper season even while lords and officers were occupied by political and military obligations. Mills had to grind the grain collected from the fields, and households stored what they could for the following winter.
In 1153 an agreement recognised Matilda’s son Henry as Stephen’s successor. The settlement established the path by which the crown would pass on Stephen’s death.
Henry II succeeds Stephen, 1154
Stephen died in October 1154, and Matilda’s son Henry succeeded him as King Henry II. The agreement made in 1153 had already recognised Henry as the heir to the crown.
On 19 December 1154 Henry and his queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, were crowned together at Westminster Abbey by Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury. Henry came to the throne with possessions in England and western France, including Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine.
