for some twenty years in his family.[1] Probably at Easter it was completed by superseding Hugh of Warelville in the shires of Leicester and Northampton which he had recently obtained for a period of five years, and William of Eynesford in Essex and Hertfordshire under exactly the same circumstances.[2] As Mr. Round has observed,[3] Aubrey and Richard did not farm these counties according to customary usage, but were in the position of the later custodes. The king was thus free to dispose of all the profits arising within a considerable portion of the realm, and the fact affords the one plausible explanation[4] of this very remarkable innovation. Moreover, in still other directions this is a year of innovation in exchequer accounting.[5] It is certain that several of the retiring sheriffs were sadly in arrears and that the two special administrators placed in control of this strong fiscal unit were able to advance a large sum, a superplusagium, over and above their receipts, a part of which went to supply the king's needs in Normandy.[6] Aubrey de Vere, the king's chamberlain,[7] had long been a special agent of the administrative curia and had had much experience as a sheriff as well. The same may be said of Richard's father, Ralph Basset. All three held the highest judicial position[8] and did wide itinerant service. Richard by marriage also[9] was identified with the same circle at court. The placing of two officials of this type over so wide a region and the dismissal of tried and experienced sheriffs are sufficient indications that the step has administrative rather than political significance, and that the matter lay very close to important interests of the king.
- ↑ Pipe Roll, 1130, pp. 44, 90, 100.
- ↑ Ibid. pp. 53, 85. Maenfinin had held his shires for four years of what was probably a longer term (Pipe Roll, p. 100). Fulk had probably served but part of a five-year term.
- ↑ Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, pp. 297–8.
- ↑ The accusation of treason brought against Geoffrey de Clinton at the Easter court, 1130 (Henry of Huntingdon, Rolls Series, p. 252), came rather too late to give the explanation. Moreover, there is no intimation that Geoffrey's associates, either sheriffs or treasury officials, were involved. At the following Michaelmas he was still sheriff. William of Pont de l'Arche was in custody of land which he had held in Oxfordshire and Richard Basset of his land in Leicestershire (Pipe Roll, pp. 6, 81).
- ↑ The blanched farms of the previous year in the eleven counties give way to farms paid by weight as one might expect. But the same change occurs also in the counties of Berkshire, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Kent, Warwickshire, and Lincolnshire, and for half of the year in those of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.
- ↑ Six hundred out of a thousand marks (Pipe Roll, p. 63).
- ↑ He was probably not great chamberlain until 1133 (Farrer, Itinerary, no. 698). Concerning him and his family, see Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, pp. 388–96.
- ↑ Aubrey is designated 'iustitiarius totius Angliae' (Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, p. 80), a title also given the two Bassets by Henry of Huntingdon (Rolls Series, p. 318; cf. Abingdon Chron. ii. 170).
- ↑ With the daughter of Geoffrey Ridel (Sloane MS., xxxi. 4 (47)), another justiciary of all England.
