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Y303: English Government and the Church 1066–1216

Depth study: The reign of Henry I — personality of Henry I and role of Roger of Salisbury

  • 3 things to know
  • Unit group 3

Overview

Recall questions on the personality of Henry I, developments in finance, justice and administration, including the Exchequer, the royal household, the development of bureaucracy, the office of justiciar, men raised from the dust, the role of Roger of Salisbury.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started
Numbers

What is the evidence for the Exchequer under Henry I, and why is it problematic?

Key term

How have historians characterised Henry I's personality and style of rule?

Key term

Why do historians disagree about the significance of the Coronation Charter?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    How have historians characterised Henry I's personality and style of rule?

    Model answer

    As calculating, patient and formidably harsh, a ruler who preferred to bind men by fear, money and marriage rather than by war, and who was praised in his own century as a lion of justice while also being remembered for spectacular cruelty.

  2. 2

    Describe the Coronation Charter of 1100 and the promises it made.

    Model answer

    It was a written proclamation issued at Henry's accession promising to abandon his brother's abuses: reasonable reliefs, no sale or prolonged vacancy of churches, restraint over wardships and marriages, and a return to the law of Edward the Confessor.

  3. 3

    Why do historians disagree about the significance of the Coronation Charter?

    Model answer

    Some read it as the first statement of contractual kingship, in which the king openly accepted limits in return for support; others treat it as short-term propaganda by a usurping younger brother, noting how systematically Henry breached its terms once secure.

  4. 4

    Explain what is meant by contractual kingship in Henry I's reign.

    Model answer

    The idea that the king's authority rested on a bargain with his tenants-in-chief, in which he undertook to observe custom and good lordship in exchange for their fealty, service and money.

  5. 5

    What is the evidence for the Exchequer under Henry I, and why is it problematic?

    Model answer

    A single Pipe Roll of 1130 shows a fully functioning audit, and a later Angevin treatise states that the Exchequer took shape under Henry; but one isolated year cannot show whether its levels of revenue, debt and amercement were typical or exceptional.

  6. 6

    What is the historiographical debate about the origins of the Exchequer?

    Model answer

    One tradition credits Roger of Salisbury with inventing a new accounting department; others argue it grew gradually out of the Anglo-Norman treasury at Winchester and Anglo-Saxon habits of shire accounting, so that Henry's reign refined rather than created it.

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