¹ For example in a book sub-titled ‘The Gentry of Angevin Yorkshire, 1154—1216’ Hugh M. Thomas refers to that period not only as ‘the earliest period in which sufficient information survives for a detailed regional study of the gentry’—which it may well be—but also as ‘a time when the gentry in some ways were first beginning to emerge as an independent force in English history’, Vassals, Heiresses, Crusaders and Thugs (Philadelphia, 1993), 3Google Scholar. According to a recent article, ‘Henry II was the gentry's midwife’, Scammell, Jean, ‘The Formation of the English Social Structure: Freedom, Knights, and Gentry, 1066-1300’ Speculum 68 (1993), 618CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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¹⁰ Very much the consensus of the contributors to the volume on Gentry and Lesser Nobility in Late Medieval Europe, ed Jones, M. (Gloucester, 1986)Google Scholar. For a particularly clear statement of this see Boulay's, F.R.H. Du contribution, ‘Was There a German Gentry?, 119–132, esp 124Google Scholar.

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²⁵ As Christine Carpenter has observed of the later medieval and early modern periods, ‘fundamental conditions remain in outline to a large degree constant: a more or less centralised monarchy lacking a large bureaucracy, standing army or police force, and an absence of modern technology to transmit and enforce orders on the ground’, in ‘Who ruled the Midlands in the later Middle Ages’ Midland History, XIX (1994), 5Google Scholar.

²⁶ For an eloquent protest against this view of Anglo-Saxon society see Campbell, , The Anglo-Saxons, 244Google Scholar.

²⁷ Scammell, , ‘The Formation;, 591, 597, 604Google Scholar. On p. 593 the argument that the same person could be at once cuitivator and knight and in both capacities dependent, is supported by quoting from the early eleventh century text in which, allegedly, Hugh of Lusignan was told by his lord, William of Aquitaine. ‘You must obey my will because you are mine. If I tell you to work as a peasant (rusticus), you must do it’. But this text (ed. Martindale, J, ‘Conventum inter Guillelmum Aquitanorum comes et Hugonem Chiliarchum’, EHR 84 (1969), 542–48)Google Scholar is, of course, anything but a manner of fact statement of the rights of a lord. See White, Stephen D., ‘Stratégie rhétorique dans la Conventio de Hugues de Lusignan’ in Mélanges qfferts à Georges Duby, (Publications de l’université de Provence: Aix en Provence, 1993), vol 2, 147—57Google Scholar.

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³¹ Harvey, Sally, ‘The Knight and the Knight's Fee in England’ Past and Present, 49 (1970), 3–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Careful reconsideration of her statistics still leaves room for the contention that ‘many of the smallholdings assigned to Domesday milites were insufficient for the support of a heavy cavalryman’, Fleming, Donald, ‘Landholding by Milites in Domesday Book: a Revision’ in Anglo-Norman Studies, xiii, ed. Chibnall, M. (Woodbridge, 1990), 97Google Scholar.

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³³ OV, vi. 350—1. Not that Orderic alleges that Waleran called them peasants. In Orderic's eyes a pagensis eques was quite capable of finer feelings and of meeting the cost of transporting William I's abandoned corpse from Rouen to Caen. ib. iv. 104.

³⁴ Blair, , Minsters and Parish Churches, 9–10Google Scholar.

³⁵ See, e.g. Fleckenstein, Josef, ‘Zur Frage der Abgrenzung von Bauer und Ritter in his Ordnungen undformende Kräfte des Mittelalters (Göttingen, 1989), 307–14Google Scholar.

³⁶ Campbell, James, ‘Was it Infancy in England? Some Questions of Comparison’ England and her Neighbours, 1066–1453Google Scholar. Essays in honour of Pierre Chaplais, ed. Jones, M. and Vale, M. (1989), 12—14Google Scholar.

³⁷ This, of course, is not to deny that the defence needs of Aethelred's government also acted as a stimulus to change. On the whole subject see Brooks, N. P., ‘Arms, Status and Warfare in Late Saxon England’, Ethelred the Unready, ed. Hill, D. (Oxford. 1978), 81—103Google Scholar.

³⁸ The Northleoda Iaga cited by Abels, Richard, Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England (1988), 165Google Scholar.

³⁹ Stenton, , First Century, 132–36Google Scholar. Even in the third edition of his Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1971), 527Google Scholar, he contented himself with the observation that ‘the position of the Old English cniht is a difficult question’ and a reference to these pages in his earlier work.

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⁴¹ Stenton, , First Century, 132—33Google Scholar, esp. n. 3 for his assertion that post 1066 the word embraced both ‘knights in the strict sense and sergeants’.

⁴² Maitland, F. W., Domesday Book and Beyond, (Fontana edn., 1960), 363Google Scholar. As Abels pointed out Aelfric of Eynsham's choice of the word cniht to translate miles in the phrase miles portat gladium is very striking, Lordship and Military Obligation, 138.

⁴³ Thus in the chronicler's account of Rufus's 1092 campaign in Normandy we hear of one castle being garrisoned with cnihts and others with ‘ridere’. ASC 1086, 1092.

⁴⁴ Battle of Maldon lines 9 and 153.

⁴⁵ Robertson, A.J., Anglo-Saxon Charters (Cambridge, 1939), no. 46Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Maitland, , Domesday Book and Beyond, 358–63Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ Stenton, , First Century, 125, 129–30Google Scholar. In a footnote, 127 n. 2, he acknowledged that ‘the persons who received Oswald’ leases form a somewhat aristocratic body‘—though without then reconsidering his comparison of the services they owed with those owed by the geneat. For his assessment of the geneat's status, Anglo- Saxon England, 473.

⁴⁸ Dyer, Christopher, Lords and Peasants in a Changing Society. The Estates of the Bishopric of Worcester 680–1540 (Cambridge, 1980), 43Google Scholar.

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⁵⁰ EHD, i. 468; ii, 875.

⁵¹ This point was made by Coss, Peter, The Knight in Medieval England 1000–1400 (Stroud, 1993). 12Google Scholar.

⁵² As Abels, , Lordship, 144Google Scholar, suggests some of the services owed by sokemen may have been performed by their dependents.

⁵³ Domesday Book. Kent, , ed. Morgan, P. (Chichester, 1983)Google Scholar, 1b, a reference I owe to the kindness of Ann Williams.

⁵⁴ Ruodlieb, ed. Knapp, F. P., (Stuttgart, 1977) III, lines 31–70Google Scholar. This envoy is variously referred to in the poem as missus, nuntius, invents and legatus. The king called him ‘Friend’ and rewarded him with 3 marks of gold. In terms of the useful distinction made by Hill, Mary C., The King's Messengers 1199–1377 (London, 1961), pp. 6—7Google Scholar, between ‘messengers’ and ‘envoys’, he was clearly an envoy. See also the discussion of legati regis by Campbell, , ‘Some Agents’, 212–14Google Scholar.

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⁵⁶ Hase, , ‘The Mother Churches of Hampshire’, 60Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Domesday Book Berkshire, ed. Morgan, P. (Chichester, 1979), 56cGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁸ Anglo-Saxon Prose, ed. Swanton, M. (1975). 25–27Google Scholar. However one of the reeve's many springtime duties might include seeing to the cutting of a deer-fence.

⁵⁹ Battle of Maldon, II. 5–8; and see Owen-Crocker, Gale R., ‘Hawks and Horse-trappings: the Insignia of Rank’, in ed. Scragg, Donald, The Battle of Maldon AD 991 (Oxford, 1991), 220—37Google Scholar.

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⁶¹ Les Miracles de Saint Benoit, ed Certain, E. De (Paris, 1858), 218Google Scholar.

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⁶³ Asser's Life of King Alfred, ed. Stevenson, W. H. (Oxford, 1959), chapters 75–6Google Scholar. On the centrality of hunting for the 9th century aristocracy see Nelson, Janet L., Charles the Bald (1992), 68–9Google Scholar.

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⁶⁶ Tristan, pp 114–16. Nelson, Cf, Charles the Bald, pp 68, 256Google Scholar.

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⁶⁸ Dialogus, 135. The best discussion of the hunting establishment of the Anglo-Norman kings is Barlow, F., William Rufus (1983), 122–129Google Scholar.

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⁷⁰ Ruodlieb, fragments II and X, esp. II line 16 ‘Sic piscando sibi ludum fecitque sodali’. Perhaps Chrétien's Fisher King was playing a different game; none the less when Perceval encountered him he was fishing mid-stream with hook and line, Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances (Harmondsworth, 1991), 424Google Scholar. At Avignon, in Clement VI's bed-chamber, at Runkelstein and in the Louvre there are fourteenth and fifteenth century paintings showing angling as an aristocratic pursuit for both sexes. My knowledge of these scenes I owe to the kindness of Andrew and Jane Martindale.

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⁷² EHD, i. 467.

⁷³ Whitelock, D., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. XI. Cf. above n. 56Google Scholar.

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⁷⁵ Although Rackham, Oliver, The History of the Countryside (1986), 49Google Scholar, 223, believes that in England interest in deer husbandry began with that blessedly familiar landmark, 1066, there seems to be some evidence for both fallow-deer and deer parks before that date.

⁷⁶ Coss, , The Knight, 18Google Scholar. It is worth noting that no eleventh-century French or Flemish author, whether writing in England or about England, appears to feel any need to comment on differences between continental and insular milites.

⁷⁷ Campbell, , The Anglo-Saxons, 244Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ See Hudson, John, Land, Law, and Lordship in Anglo-Normon England (Oxford, 1994), 4Google Scholar, 48—60, 227—9, 279, for the county court and tenants’ rights after 1066.

⁷⁹ Cited by Morgan, D.A. L., ‘The Individual Style of the English Gentleman’ in ed. Jones, , Gentry and Lesser Nobility, 17Google Scholar.

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⁸² Battle of Maldon, II. 232, 294. In twelfth century French those who fought courageously, of whatever rank, were said to be acting like chevaliers, Jordan of Fantosme's Chronicle ed. Johnston, R. C. (Oxford, 1981), II. 865, 1233Google Scholar.

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⁸⁵ Abels, Lordship, 143–4. Doubtless, as Abels has emphasised, we should resist the old idea that Harold's army had been based on a general levy of all able-bodied freemen. The freemen named in Domesday Book would have been lords in their own right, gentleman farmers rather than peasants, and presumably owing honourable services to their own lords.

⁸⁶ ASC, CD; however the Worcester Latin version makes it sound as though it was the lithsmen rather than all the good men and true of the south-eastern counties who were willing to commit themselves to Godwin's cause, cf. Life of King Edward, 40

⁸⁷ OV, vi. 3501–1.

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¹⁰¹ Given his argument that this set of ideals was first developed in tenth-century Germany, he might also have pointed to Byrhtferth's interest in matters German.

¹⁰² Campbell, ‘Was it infancy’, 5–6. However there were elements of civil war in 1014–16.

¹⁰³ Life of King Edward, 8–9, especially ‘quamque a puero addidicerat mentis mansuetudinem non exuit, verum hanc, ut naturaliter sibi inditam, erga subditos et inter pares eterna assiduitate excoluit’. See pp. 32 and 42 (also ASC ‘E’) for his restraint in 1052. In Cicero's, De Officiis, Ulysses is represented as a model of affability, tolerating insults in order to achieve his ultimate ends, Jaeger, Origins of Courtliness, 36Google Scholar.

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¹⁰⁵ ASC 978.

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¹⁰⁸ See the explicit comments on the avoidance of civil war in ASC ‘D’ for 1052 and in the Life of King Edward, 80.

¹⁰⁹ Maxims I, from the Exeter Book, in Bradley, S. A. J., Anglo-Saxon Poetry (1982), 347Google Scholar; The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio, ed. Morton, C. and Muntz, H. (Oxford 1972)Google Scholarwhere the English ‘Nescia gens belli solamina spernit equorum’ (1.369) are contrasted with the French, ‘Artibus instructi, Franci, bellare periti’ (I.423).

¹¹⁰ Strickland, Matthew, ‘Slaughter, Slavery or Ransom: the Impact of the Conquest on Conduct in Warfare’ in England in the Eleventh Century ed. Hicks, C. (Stamford, 1992), 41–60Google Scholar.

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¹¹⁴ OV ii. 314, 318. Both William of Jumièges and William of Poitiers felt that English political mores were more bloodthirsty than Norman ones.

¹¹⁵ Ruodlieb, III, lines 5–14; IV, lines 86–7.

¹¹⁶ Chibnall, Marjorie, Anglo-Norman England (Oxford, 1986), 187–8Google Scholar. For further development of this point, Gillingham, John, ‘Conquering the Barbarians: War and Chivalry in Twelfth-Century Britain’, The Haskins Society Journal 4 (1992), 70–4Google Scholar.

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¹¹⁸ “In this context it is worth reading the scene in Beowulf where the Swedish king Ongentheow besieged his mortal enemies. All night long he repeatedly threatened them, saving that in the morning he would dispatch them, some by the sword's edge, some on the gallows-trees, for the birds' entertainment. Although such threats were also made in the twelfth century they cannot have sent shivers down the spine of a besieged nobleman in quite the same way as they must have done earlier.

¹¹⁹ Gillingham, , ‘1066 and the Introduction of Chivalry’, 44—50Google Scholar. However, as Jane Martindale kindly pointed out, my discussion of diffidatio in this article clearly overestimates the extent of William of Malmesbury's originality as a consequence of my forgetting the use of the verb defidavit in Hugh of Lusignan's conventum (see above n. 26). Fortunately although this weakens the case for William's originality, it also strengthens the case for the influence of French political mores and vocabulary in post-conquest England. For further cogent discussion of diffidatio see David Carpenter, ‘From King John to the first English duke: 1215–1337’ in eds. Smith, R. and Moore, J. S., The House of Lords, a thousand years of British tradition (1994), 28–38Google Scholar.