observed throughout the realm explicitly for the benefit of the clergy.
But the peace of the king was seen to be of many sorts (multiplex): it
was given by the king’s hand, covered especially the octaves of the
king’s crowning and of the feasts of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost,
and protected the four great roads of Watling Street, Fosse Way,
Icknield Street, and Ermine Street, and the waterways by which food
was brought to the towns. A clause in the compilation called Quadri-
partitusgave the exact dimensions of the peace (grid) which surrounded
the king’s court: three miles, three furlongs, three acres-breadths, nine
feet, and nine barleycorns in each direction from the door of the king’s
dwelling. Behind all these special peaces, there was also the ‘great peace’
(pax maxima) of the frankpledge system, which maintained everyone ‘in
a secure state’ (firmiori statu) under the surety of his tithing.^41
The summary given by the compilation so-called ‘Laws of Henry I’
(c.1115) of the jurisdictional rights which ‘a proper ordering of peace
and security reserves to the king of England in his land and over all men’
put first ‘breach of the king’s peace given by his hand or writ’, followed
by the tax known as Danegeld, contempt of the king’s writs and com-
mands generally, and ‘the death or injury of his servants wherever occur-
ring’. Breach of the peace which the king gave personally was the most
heinous and incurred loss of limbs, but the king’s peace might also be
conferred by a sheriff or other royal official. By ‘public announcement’
God’s peace and the king’s peace could be established over a drinking
assembly ‘set up for the making of any gift or purchase or gild meeting
or anything of this kind’, and in these circumstances a fine for breach of
the peace was to go to the master of the house. Recorded lawsuits of the
time suggest that the most important manifestation of the king’s peace
in England was coming to be intervention by royal writ to enforce the
peaceable settlement of disputes. There is an early example in William
Rufus’s own great case against William de Saint-Calais, bishop of
Durham, accused of conspiracy in a feudal revolt of 1088. The bishop
is described as appealing unsuccessfully to the king for the return of the
lands which the sheriffs had been ordered to seize from him, for he had
always offered justice. ‘However, it did not please you to restore to me
what was mine, as I requested and as it seemed just to me, but you
granted me your peace by your writ to come safely to you... and in the
same writ you ordered your lieges throughout England to leave all my
things in peace until you knew whether I would stay with you.’^42
The peace of the land 81(^41) Liebermann, Gesetze der Angelsachsen, i. 487, 490, 627–8, 637–8, 645, 651, 661; see
also B. R. O’Brien, God’s Peace and King’s Peace: The Laws of Edward the Confessor
(Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania P., 1999).
(^42) Leges Henrici Primi, tr. Downer, 70–1, 109 (10. 1), 246 (79.3, 4), 252–5 (81); English
Lawsuits from William I to Richard I, ed R. C. van Caenegem, Selden Soc. 106–7 (London,
1990–1), i. 92, and cf. 180, 199, 224, 234, 260, 264, 299.