Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of tables and illustration
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- INTRODUCTION
- 1 A BORDER REGION?
- 2 THE MAKING OF A BORDER ARISTOCRACY
- 3 WARFARE AND DIPLOMACY
- 4 THE EXTENT AND NATURE OF THE MILITARY FRONTIER
- 5 THE MILITARIZATION OF SOCIETY
- 6 THE SHAPING OF ADMINISTRATIVE TERRITORIES
- 7 THE BORDER LORDSHIPS AND THE ENGLISH STATE
- CONCLUSION
- Select bibliography
- Index
4 - THE EXTENT AND NATURE OF THE MILITARY FRONTIER
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of tables and illustration
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- INTRODUCTION
- 1 A BORDER REGION?
- 2 THE MAKING OF A BORDER ARISTOCRACY
- 3 WARFARE AND DIPLOMACY
- 4 THE EXTENT AND NATURE OF THE MILITARY FRONTIER
- 5 THE MILITARIZATION OF SOCIETY
- 6 THE SHAPING OF ADMINISTRATIVE TERRITORIES
- 7 THE BORDER LORDSHIPS AND THE ENGLISH STATE
- CONCLUSION
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
As we have seen, Earl Roger apportioned the westernmost hundreds of his county almost wholesale to his chief followers, Corbet, Warin and Picot de Sai respectively, while he himself built the key castle of Montgomery and retained the surrounding territory, termed a castellaria in Domesday Book, in demesne. This particular dispensation of lands formed the mould within which the individual Marcher lordships adjoining Shropshire were to be cast. However, it would be too hasty simply to equate the military frontier zone with the extent of the westernmost hundreds of Shropshire. For one thing, it may be doubted that the men who originally concentrated their military resources here thought they were creating a permanent military frontier. Given the momentum which, it was argued earlier, characterized the Norman advance into Wales, it seems, indeed, probable that the castleries were ad hoc arrangements, to be abandoned once further conquests had been completed. The strategy of grabbing compact tracts of land and organizing them for the defence of a castle was, after all, the tried and tested manner of territorial conquest of Earl Roger's contemporaries. Indeed, Robert of Rhuddlan's conquests in northern Wales have been described as paradigmatic of how the Norman landed settlement advanced in England. The frontier hundreds of Shropshire were not necessarily intended to be a permanent, ‘national’ military frontier.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Medieval March of WalesThe Creation and Perception of a Frontier, 1066–1283, pp. 138 - 172Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010