The unfree in the Anglo-Norman realm, c.1000-c.1100, with special reference to slavery

This thesis is a comparative study of the unfree in Normandy and England in the eleventh century. The unfree formed a large percentage of the population in these areas, along a scale from the most unfree, the slaves, to the nearest to freedom, arguably the villeins. Although this thesis is concerned with the wider category of the unfree, I pay special attention to the least free group, the slaves. The reason for this special treatment arises from the comparative nature of my work. According to modern scholars, in England slavery was common yet in Normandy it was not. In fact, the eleventh-century reality in both regions is more complex. In this thesis I will challenge the historiographical issue of Norman exceptionalism that assumes that Norman peasants were unbound to the extent that, by the end of the eleventh century, it is difficult to speak of an unfree peasantry in Normandy at all. Overall, there is less to challenge in the modern scholarship on the unfree in England, though I will argue for a more nuanced interpretation of some of the source material. By comparing the two regions' unfree and slave populations I will suggest new perspectives on the changes that followed the Norman Conquest of England; namely, the disappearance of slaves from the documentary record. Moving away from the conventional scholarly approach that concentrates heavily on documents such as law codes and charters, I explore unfreedom in a wider variety of texts including narrative sources such as chronicles, hagiographical texts, and poetry. This will enable me to argue in a more nuanced fashion that elite society's treatment and perceptions of the unfree, and slaves in particular, were not so different in Normandy and England.