Page:The Normans in European History.djvu/81

Rh shows that, with a few significant exceptions, the materials for early Norman history were little richer then than now, so that the great losses must have occurred before this time, that is to say, during the Middle Ages and in the devastation of the English invasion and of the Protestant wars of the sixteenth century. The cathedral library at Bayeux, for example, possesses three volumes of a huge cartulary charred by the fire into which it was thrown when the town was sacked by the Protestants. On the other hand, it should be noted that the French Revolution accomplished one beneficent result for local records in the secularization of ecclesiastical archives and their collection into the great repositories of the Archives Départementales, whose organization is still the envy of historical scholars across the Channel. One who has enjoyed for many months access to these admirable collections of records will be permitted to express his gratitude to those who created them, as well as to those by whom they are now so courteously administered.

Piecing together our scattered information regarding the Normandy of the eleventh century, we note at the outset that it was a feudal society, that is to say, land was for the most part held of a lord by hereditary tenure on condition of military service. Indeed feudal ideas had spread so far that they even penetrated the church, so that in some instances the revenues of the clergy had been granted to laymen and archdeaconries and