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Changing Perceptions of the New Administrative Class in Anglo-Norman and Angevin England: The Curiales and Their Conservative Critics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Ralph V. Turner
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Extract

A complaint among twelfth-century English moralists and chroniclers was that monarchs were choosing “men raised from the dust” to be their ministers and counselors instead of members of old noble families. They charged that the king was choosing as his courtiers or familiares low-born men—plebes, ignobiles, even rustici or servi—allowing them to usurp places that belonged to the aristocracy. This chorus of complaint began in the time of William the Conqueror's sons. Only then did nobiles and curiales begin to divide into two distinct groups, and new administrative posts provided opportunities for new men to rise to greater wealth and influence.

The early twelfth-century monastic chronicler, Orderic Vitalis, wrote that William the Conqueror “raised up the lowest of his Norman followers to the greatest riches.” Often cited is his complaint about Henry I, “So he pulled down many great men [illustres] from positions of eminence …. He ennobled others of base stock [de ignobili stirpe] who had served him well, raised them, so to say, from the dust, and heaping all kinds of favors on them, stationed them above earls and famous castellans.” The author of the Gesta Stephani also complained that Henry I took men of low birth [ex plebeio genere], who had entered his service as court pages and enriched them, endowed them with wide estates, and made them his chief officials. Another chronicler, Richard of Hexham, made a similar comment, although in admiring rather than condemning language, “He oppressed many nobles because of their faithlessness; he elevated to high honors many commoners [ignobiles], whom he found to be upright and loyal to him.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , April 1990 , pp. 93 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1990

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