spread of royal administration an irresistible impetus at the expense of
feudal lordship. The fiefs held from the king that were subjected to a
comprehensive survey in 1220 were grouped in the record into eight
bailliagesin Normandy (Gisors, Verneuil, Rouen, Caux, Caen, Bayeux,
Avranches, and Cotentin) and four in the old Capetian lands
(Vermandois, Sens, Étampes, and Bourges).^38 Below the baillis, tempo-
rary, not hereditary, castellans were being appointed for royal castles,
and alongside the prévôtstown mayors who were essentially farmers of
the king’s taxes.^39 The supervision of the Capetian prévôts had
originally been by the seneschal or steward, the chief minister of the
king’s as of every great feudatory’s household. The royal seneschal from
1154, Count Thibaut of Blois, died in 1191 on the Third Crusade and
was not replaced.^40 King John’s seneschal for Normandy was kept on by
King Philip for a brief period in 1204, but then the office disappears
there as well.^41 A series of inquests made possible by the existence of
newly professional servants at the central and the local level took stock
of the feudal situation in Normandy and subjected it to the king’s will.^42
Along the Loire and southward, the main governmental resource of
the king of France remained the stewards of the fiefs which now looked
directly to him as lord. In Anjou, including Maine and Touraine, which
controlled vital routes to the south, William des Roches was hereditary
seneschal by the grant in 1199 of Prince Arthur, King John’s nephew
and rival, which King Philip had gladly confirmed. But William was
instructed to hand over any castles in Anjou to which the king should
wish to appoint his own castellans. Though hereditary, the seneschalcy
was entirely within the king’s power to define. Making provision for the
defence of the Loire region against King John in January 1207, Philip
took away from des Roches Touraine and its seneschalcy, the provost-
ships and seneschalcies of Chinon, Bourgueil, and Loudon, and the
provostship of Saumur, and from this time men who have the look of
professional administrators appear as baillisor sénéchauxof Touraine
and Poitou.^43
Though the territorial marking-out of bailliagesand sénéchaussées
was dictated by the requirements of tax-collecting, it was essentially as
agents of royal justice that the corps of baillisextended the king’s
authority throughout France. The teams of two or more ballivi domini
118 Judicial Systems of France and England
(^38) Baldwin, Government of Philip Augustus, 292 ff.
(^39) Ibid.301.
(^40) Ibid.31–2, 55, 80, 104, 465 n.29.
(^41) Ibid.221.
(^42) Les Registres de Philippe Auguste, 54 ff.; Baldwin, Government of Philip Augustus, 249,
289 ff.
(^43) Baldwin, Government of Philip Augustus, 233 ff.; Recueil des Actes de Philippe Auguste,
ii, nos. 608, 829, 838, 948, 963.