1919.] EARLY CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY. 185 



century they ranked next to the comte at the head of the 

 baronage. They were in constant attendance at the Duke's 

 great court, and their names figure on most of his charters. If 

 their office was not hereditary at the first, by the end of the 

 10th century many had already succeeded in making it so. 

 Their powers were also greater than those of the minor 

 vicomtes under Henry II. The statutes of Lillebonne of 

 William the Conqueror, of the year 1080 a) tell us that it was 

 to them that the bishops looked for protection from the 

 oppressions of the barons, and though on account of the 

 scarcity of documentary evidence we know little of their 

 judicial powers, it is probable that they held the pleas of the 

 sword in their districts for at least all the lesser infractions of 

 the Duke's peace. ^ The list of public crimes, reserved by 

 William the Conqueror for his own judgment, contains many, 

 such as, assaults on the high road, on pilgrims, on suitors 

 going to and coming from the Duke's court, assaults in the 

 homestead and at the plough, etc., which can hardly have been 

 of sufficient importance to have been tried only by the Great 

 Court of the Duke, presided over by him in person. They 

 had also the defence of their districts committed to them, 

 and thus we find in the reign of Duke Richard IL, Nigel I., 

 Vicomte du Cotentin, gathering around him the barons of the 

 Cotentin and repelling the Saxon invaders under King 

 Ethelbert.< 3) Under William the Conqueror their powers 

 were already beginning to be curtailed. ^ After the revolt of 

 the vicomtes of Lower Normandy, which ended in their 

 defeat at the battle of Val-es-Dunes, even after Nigel, 

 Vicomte du Cotentin, had received pardon and had had his 

 lands restored to him, for many years Duke William retained 

 the vicomital powers in the Cotentin in his own hands, and 

 appointed first Eudes Capella, and later Robert Bertram, as 

 vicomtes, and only restored them, ( 5 ) in about 1072, to Nigel's 

 son, Nigel III. 



Further towards the end of his reign he created new 

 vicomtes, such as that of Orbec. This process was continued 

 by Henry I., Geoffrey and Henry II. until at the end of the 

 12th century we find Normandy covered by a net-work of 

 new vicomtes and bailiwicks, while the old hereditary 

 vicomtes, such as the Vicomtes du Bessin, Avranches, and 



(1) Powicke. The Angevin Administration of Normandy, English Historical 

 Review, xxi., 84, p. 647. 



(2) Valin. Le Due de Normandie et sa Cour, p. 245. 



(3) Chesnel. Le Cotentin et l'Avranchin, p. 7, 108, Guill. de Jumieges, I. V. c. 4. 

 (4> Powicke, Loss of Normandy, 64. 



(5) Chesnel. Le Contentin et L'Avranchin, 136. 



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