Rev. 13 October 2003
Henry I used a policy of "political" appeasement, the Charter of Liberties or Coronation Charter, to draw supporters to him after the abusive reign of his brother William Rufus. Henry promised not to exercise his feudal privileges arbitrarily. He did not always keep those promises -- he, like his brother, often kept bishoprics and abbacies unfilled for years in order to enjoy those revenues -- and, in fact, Henry was frequently exploitive but he was much more discreet and the motives were not, exclusively, personal ones: he used his monetary resources to put down rebellions and defend frontiers, even though his expansionist policy was frequently the very cause of those rebellions.
One observes, under Henry I, major innovations in royal administration and the royal judicial system. In both areas royal authority and efficiency increase and serve to check potential competition from feudal power.
Henry I introduced the practice of sending royal justices to the local level to hear pleas. Ordinarily King and his great men -- administrators and royal intimates -- acted as a royal court to hear cases but, obviously, the king could not be everywhere at once. So the creation of this figure of the royal justice [called itinerant justices or justices in eyre (errer, "to travel"; eyre, "periodic circuit"; iter, "journey")] meant the king's judicial authority was available everywhere.
These itinerant justices, or "justices in eyre," acted in the king's name. By hearing important cases in the shires (counties) they greatly enlarged the scope of the king's justice, often diverting cases from the feudal courts or dealing with problems that otherwise might not have been considered judicially at all. During the reign of Henry I, the judicial tours of the itinerant justices became more and more regular. Under his grandson, Henry II, there were annual circuits of the justices in eyre. Those general eyres, or assizes (judicial sittings usually related to property questions), succeeded in extending royal judicial authority across the kingdom.
Much of the monarch's power in the counties depended upon the loyalty and efficiency of the sheriffs, the king's chief appointees on the local level. Under Henry I, a very competent, gifted administrator, Roger, bishop of Salisbury, introduced an effective method of accounting known as the exchequer. Later the Exchequer become an important department of state but originally it was a biannual audit of the royal revenues from the counties. All the sheriffs of England were required to come to the treasury to report their revenues to a group of auditors.
The exchequer served as an important control over the activities of the king's sheriffs, and served to keep the revenues at a "proper" level. Indeed, many sheriffs seem to have grown too powerful for the king's good (often abusing their positions to enrich themselves).
Henry also had his own "personnel policy." He removed certain sheriffs (especially those guilty of fraudulence but also those sheriffs who tended to see their positions as hereditary) and chose new ones from obscure families of the smaller landholding class who had already prove proven themselves in service to the monarch and who hoped to rise still further.
Human beings who owe their recent rise to a particular individual tend to be highly loyal. It's a loyalty that guarantees support and contrasts significantly with an individual who occupies a position held traditionally by his family and who is personally wealthy even without the position of sheriff. The latter figure is much more independent.
Henry I also guaranteed loyalty among members of the feudal aristocracy by using feudal "spoils" --forfeited estates, wives, heiresses, wardships, etc. -- to create a royalist core of loyal feudal lord. The monarch was the key source for the ambitious. Henry I proved himself adroit in winning the allegiance of a number of his subjects, both magnates -- top level of the feudal pyramid -- and upstarts -- lower levels but men an the make -- through the astute use of patronage. For those who demonstrated their loyalty and won his favor, he provided tantalizing opportunities to advance their careers and fortunes in the royal service. Such men were given an inside advantage in acquiring forfeited lands, wealthy wives, lucrative wardships, danegeld exemptions, administrative offices, and the various other spoils at the crown's disposal. In this way, great baronial families flourished if they were loyal to the king, while a number of lever figures [from the upper ranks just the same] rose to high position, and men of still lower station ascended into the prosperous middle levels of the feudal aristocracy.
To be sure, these royal favorites had to pay the king for every privilege he gave them -- in Henry's government nothing was cheap -- and they seldom rose to high position overnight. They were fully aware that they owed their existing success and any potential success in the future to the monarch. They gave, not surprisingly, loyal, frequently capable, service. This is one way of controlling or curtailing the possibility of feudal independence. The distribution of "political" spoils continues, as we all know, to be a major key to "Political Stability." The disloyal funcionario is a contradiction! This is naturally a major feature of "Party Politics." Royal patronage was a central and enduring element in English politics and society for many centuries after the reign of Henry I but he was the clever fellow in England who first developed it.
Historians assume Henry was an energetic king -- some 1500 royal acts, including many royal writs, have survived from his reign in comparison with the figure of 300 from William I's reign. The royal writ was Anglo-Saxon in origin but was retained by post-conquest kings and used frequently The historians find the 1500 figure impressive, and feel certain that those that have survived constitute only a small fraction of the original total pouring out of Henry I's Chancery. Taken together the royal writs of Henry I -- dealing with an immense variety of judicial and administrative matters: grants or confirmations of lands and privileges, orders of restitution, commands to act in some way or to cease acting in some way, exemptions from certain taxes, or freedom an from tolls -- convey a powerful impression of the scope and authority or royal government under Henry I.
England had never before been so thoroughly administered. There were some who complained about the abuses of royal officials and the emergence of big government. But for most, royal administration and the royal judicial system under King Henry I were welcome. In comparison with the conditions of civil strife and local violence and thuggery that characterized most of Europe in the early 12th century England seemed enviable. Things could be quite harsh under Henry. For example, his minters were found to be guilty of producing adulterated coins. The King had them castrated and deprived of their right hands! Yet, paradoxically, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle observed of Henry I an his death, "He was a good man, and people were in great awe of him. No one dared injure another in his time." His severity, one supposes, kept the "peace."