The Treaty of Paris (1259) and the Aristocracy of England and Normandy

Summary

King Henry of England came to France with the earl of Gloucester and many knights and prelates from his kingdom and made peace with Saint Louis, king of France. For he quitclaimed to the kings of France whatever right he was claiming in the duchy of Normandy and the counties of Anjou, Maine, Touraine and Poitou and in their fiefs, by the express wish of his brother Richard, king of the Romans, and the counsel of the princes and prelates of England.

This passage, adapted from Primat's Gesta Ludovici Regis some time after the canonisation of Saint Louis in 1297, was copied in the early fifteenth century into one of the thirteenth-century cartularies of the Norman abbey of Saint-Évroult. As well as showing the interest that late medieval Norman monks had in their Anglo- Norman past, the account reminds us that the peace of 1258–9 was concluded not only between Louis IX and Henry III, but also between their barons; an exceptionally large number of nobles are said to have accompanied the king of England to Paris. The active participation of the aristocracy in the Angevin-Capetian negotiations is easy to explain. Like the kings of England, many landowners after 1204 aspired to bring England and Normandy once more under a single ruler, and that hope shaped Anglo-French relations throughout the period from 1204 to 1259. Furthermore, the properties confiscated from landowners who had chosen to remain overseas in or after 1204 formed a distinct aspect of the context for the peace negotiations. These properties comprised the so-called terre Normannorum confiscated in England from landowners who opted to remain in France, and the less well-known French estates seized by the Capetian kings from landowners who remained in England. On both sides of the Channel, the seized possessions would play an important role in royal patronage; they also had an influence upon legal developments concerning the rights of ‘aliens’ and inheritance, and in the development of English and French national identity.

The present article considers the nature and extent of the terre Normannorum and their French equivalents, briefly tracing their history to 1259 and assessing their fiscal and political significance by the 1250s. In examining the material consequences of the ‘loss of Normandy’ for the Anglo-Norman aristocracy, it aims to depict the context for the peace agreement that the two monarchies and their leading subjects concluded in 1259.