Norman Efficiency

Finally, the idea that 1066 ushered in a new phase of Anglo-Norman ‘efficiency’, with (in the words of the nineteenth-century sage and reactionary Thomas Carlyle) the ‘pot-bellied equanimity’ of the Anglo-Saxons easily mastered by the ‘heroic toil’ of their new Norman drill serjeants, is itself badly in need of rethinking. The military caste of the Norman Conquest has undoubtedly led to the portrayal of the Normans themselves as a warrior nation, dressed in chain mail even when in bed, plotting lordly proto-Thatcherite schemes to impose order upon a chaotic society. Out went the hobbit burrows of the Anglo-Saxons and in came the newly pre-fabricated efficiency of castles, counting houses and dungeons. Norman hard tack was substituted for Anglo-Saxon cakes and ale.

In reality, the myth of Norman administrative efficiency is precisely that: a myth. To cope with Viking attack, Anglo-Saxon England had developed a sophisticated concept of social responsibility in which many within society were required to contribute to the burden of society’s defence. The King served as collector of taxes such as the Danegeld (intended to buy off the Danes), Heregeld for the payment of ships and their crews, pontage for the building and maintenance of bridges, and wall-money (later known as ‘murage’) for the building and upkeep of town defences. By contrast, after 1066, the tendency was for the new Norman kings to treat such revenues as perquisites from which their own expenses could be met and, so far as their greater lords were concerned, as obligations from which favoured friends might be exempted. The outcome was a rapid decline in the capacity of taxation to raise the funds necessary for the task in hand, and consequently the imposition of an ever heavier burden upon an ever dwindling base of potential taxpayers.

There are parallels here with the history of taxation in the last years of the Roman Empire, when increasing demands for taxation were placed upon an ever dwindling number of tax payers. Thanks largely to the fact that England experienced no threats comparable to that posed by the Vikings to the kings of Wessex, or by the Germanic tribes to the Roman Empire, public works after 1066 somehow muddled through. Responsibility for bridges, for example, particularly for those such as Rochester’s, which had an annoying tendency to fall down, was placed unfairly but with some degree of success upon the local people with most interest in maintaining communications, which in practice meant those owning land on either side of the bridge. This is nonetheless far from arguing that the state became more rather than less interventionist after 1066. On the contrary, in many respects, save when the King himself could hope to gain from the proceeds of taxation, justice or public works, there was less attention paid after 1066 to even such seeming social necessities as the maintenance of roads and bridges, which were, to a very large extent, as before the seventh century, left to take care of themselves.