Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/99

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1920 THE TWELFTH CENTURY 91 is a payment to a group of clerks who are described as custodes civitatis et cornitatus. Capellani appear to have been used for administrative purposes of this sort at least in the great ecclesiastical baronies. . . . Robert capellanus is one of those who account for the scutage of the knights of the Earl of Leicester (p. 351), Dealing, however, with a matter that I have elsewhere discussed ^ — the pay, in the form of a daily wage — Mr. Lapsley has shown from the pipe rolls that, at least in the royal castles,^ the standard daily wage of our three members of the staff, the chaplain {capellanus), the porter, and the watchman, was, in the twelfth century, a penny a day each. This conclusion I would supple- ment by evidence, in the Norman rolls, where we find the chaplain of the tower of Rouen and the porter of the castle each paid at the rate of sixpence a day ^ in 1180. At Vaudreuil, in 1184, the porter and the watchman had twopence a day each.* At Bur-le-Roy, a ducal residence adjacent to Bayeux, the chaplains of the two chapels, in 1195, were paid at the rate of sixpence a day each, the porter twopence, and the two watchmen two- pence each. 5 In Normandy, however, as in England, there are a good many cases of payment in a lump sum (or even partly in kind) instead of a daily wage. 1. The obvious function of the chaplain (capelUinus) would be ministration in the castle chapel. Mr. Lapsley admits that ' As for the capellanus, every castle seems to have contained a chapel and chaplain ', and that ' the capellanus would have definite duties in the chapel' (pp. 349, 350). Although the avail- able space in the keep of a Norman castle would be very limited, some of it was sacrificed for a chapel, probably because, when a castle was besieged, the garrison could not otherwise attend divine service. Mr. Lapsley, however, advances the surely novel theory that The proper function of the capellanus would seem to have been the supervision of the work done on the fabric of the castle . . . the clerk of the works might be either a capellanus or a clericus. . . . But the administrative work in connexion with the fabric of the castle would be the same. . . . We may fairly assume then that a clerk of the works, whether described as clericus or capellanus, was to be found in the twelfth-century castle, and that it was his business to supervise the fabric, &c. (p. 350).

  • e, g. Feudal England, pp. 271-3.
  • He does not mention the ' resident chaplain ' at Alnwick, paid a penny a day

(Pipe RoU, 1 Ric. I, p. 3). ' ' Capellano de Turre . . . Portario castri ' : Magn. Rot. Scacc. Norm. i. 70.

  • Ibid. i. 111.

° Ibid. i. 225. One has, of course, to bear in mind that such payments would then be in Angevin money, which was only worth a quarter of sterling money. Thus, in 1184, we have ' De Thesauro Angl' c. li. sterl.' pro cccc li. and[egav']. . . . De Camera Regis c li. sterl.' pro cccc h. and[egav'] ' {ibid. i. 110). So too ' Waltero Pipart c sol. vi. sol. viii d. pro duabus marcis [i. e. Andeg.] argenti de feodo ' in 1195 (ibid. i. 156).