History of Hertfordshire - High Middle Ages

High Middle Ages

After the Norman Invasion, Edgar the Ætheling (the successor to Harold Godwinson) surrendered to William the Conqueror at Berkhamsted. William created the manor of Berkhamsted, and bestowed it on Robert, Count of Mortain, who was his half-brother. From Robert's son William de Mortain it passed to King Henry I, and is still owned by the Royal Family. Henry held court there in 1123.

The Domesday Book, completed in 1086, lists 168 settlements in Hertfordshire. Hertfordshire's population grew quickly from then until the Black Death reached the county in 1349. The Norman church at St Albans Abbey was finished in 1088.

Hertfordshire had a conflicted relationship with the King during the High Middle Ages. Like most counties in the south-east, most of Hertfordshire was in private (i.e. non-royal) ownership during the High Middle Ages. Royal land comprised about 7% of the county's area. The first Earl of Hertford, Gilbert de Clare, was so titled in 1138. He bore one of the first two sets of heraldic arms in England: three gold chevrons on a red shield. His grandson Richard de Clare once offered King John £100 in respect of legal proceedings concerning his inheritance, but then during the First Barons War he sided with the Barons against the King. Richard became one of the twenty-five Barons sworn to enforce the Magna Carta, for which he was excommunicated in 1215.

Thomas Becket, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1161, held the honour of Berkhamsted Castle from 1155 until 1163. King Henry III celebrated Christmas there in 1163.

Around this time, motte-and-bailey castles were built in Great Wymondley, Pirton and Therfield. Watford was founded in the 12th century, probably as a result of a market and church set up there by the Abbot of St Albans. In 1130, the earliest Pipe Roll shows that King Henry I's Queen Consort Adeliza owned property in the county.

The first draft of the Magna Carta was written at St Albans Abbey in 1213. It contained significant provisions still in force to this day, including the principle of habeas corpus (which was first invoked in court in 1305). Two years later, King John was in St Albans when he learned of the Archbishop of Canterbury's suspension. Though John agreed to the Magna Carta, he did not adhere to it, and Hertfordshire was the main battlefield in the civil war that followed. On 16 December 1216, during the First Barons' War, Hertford Castle surrendered after a siege from Dauphin Louis (later Louis VIII of France), whom the English barons had invited to England to replace John as King. Berkhamsted Castle surrendered around the same time.

In winter 1217, royalist forces plundered St Albans, took captives and extorted £100 from the Abbot, who feared the Abbey would be burned.

In 1261 King Henry III held parliament in the county. In 1295, another parliament was held in St Albans, and in 1299, King Edward I gave Hertford Castle to his wife Margaret of France on her wedding day.