Wulfstan of Worcester recovered the possessions of his church
‘endowed with the same liberty with which its first founders [the kings
of the Mercians and the tenth-century kings of England] made it free
(ipsam liberavit)’.^111 The ‘customs and liberties’ which Archbishop
Lanfranc claimed in 1072 before an assembly on Penenden Heath of
men from the whole county of Kent, ‘Frenchmen and especially
Englishmen skilled in the ancient laws and customs’, were ‘sake, soke,
toll, team, flymenfyrm, grithbreach, forestel, haimfare and infangthief’,
with all other customs equal or inferior to these, in lands and waters, in
woods, roads, and meadows, and all things and all places within the city
and without, within the borough and without’; in this trial, which is
referred to more than once in Domesday book, Lanfranc had to estab-
lish his free customs not only against Bishop Odo of Bayeux, earl of
Kent, but also against the Conqueror, for he claimed to hold his lands
in the same way that the king held his—liberas et quietasand with ‘the
free customs due to him’.^112
Amongst the many apparently spurious charters of Westminster
Abbey there is one of Henry I confirming freedom from all episcopal
and secular exactions to the place in which he has just been anointed
king, and adding to ‘this liberty... all laws and customs which pertain
to me’.^113 That day in 1100 was certainly the occasion of the addressing
of a general charter to all Henry’s ‘barons and faithful men, both French
and English’, which moved quickly from making the church ‘free’ by
undertaking not to sell or lease its property or exploit the lands of
bishoprics or abbeys during vacancies, to an abolition of ‘all the evil
customs by which the kingdom of England has been unjustly
oppressed’, which turn out to be such things as the charging of exces-
sive reliefs from feudal heirs to succeed to their fathers’ lands.^114 Soon
after this laymen like the king’s liegeman Hardulf and the king’s butler
William de Albini were being granted manors ‘with sake and soke and
all liberties and free customs’, and Stephen’s probable coronation
charter of 1135 confirmed all the liberties, good laws, and customs
which Henry I had granted (as Henry had purported to restore the law
of Edward the Confessor), but now to all the king’s barons and men,
without special mention of churches.^115 The ‘Laws of Henry I’ had
already borne the title: ‘Henry’s laws concerning the liberty of the church
and all England’, and stated that ‘vavassors’ holding liberas terrashad
the liberty of exercising justice in them, that the king’s judges should be
Property and liberty 213(^111) English Lawsuits,4, 40–1.
(^112) Ibid. 7–15.
(^113) RRANii. 1–2, 305–6
(^114) SRi. 4; Stubbs, Select Charters, 158; EHDii. 400–2.
(^115) RRANii. 61 (no. 793), 85–6 (no. 911), 315 (xliii), 322 (lxiii); and iii, nos. 270, 271,
928.