Did Normans kiss and sell?

QUESTION Was the claimed feudal right of droit du seigneur a myth? The feudal system, introduced to england by the Normans in 1066, was designed to permit a relatively insignificant number of aristocrats to dominate a much larger peasant workforce.

The Normans regulated flour production by the introduction of ‘King’s mills’, as well as controlling the military and ownership of weapons, coinage, education, the law, religion and land tenure.

Marriage was also strictly governed. A feudal tenant wishing to marry off a daughter had first to obtain the permission of his local overlord — doing so without this permission was a serious offence, with crippling financial penalties.

If permission was granted, the tenant had to pay a fine, which came to be known as merchet, to compensate the feudal lord for the loss of a member of his workforce.

The idea that a local knight had the right to sleep with a tenant’s daughter before her wedding night appears to be post- medieval fiction. Modern historians have found no evidence of it in law books, charters, papal decrees, trial records or glossaries.

It’s certainly not mentioned in the work of the 12th-century monk Gratian, who wrote extensively on the Canon laws governing marriage. No woman commented on the practice, and no account identifies any female victim. It is interesting to note that the spelling droit du seigneur is a modern French term that seems to have been first used in a 16th-century work of historical fiction. had it been an Anglo-Norman phrase, it would be droite de segniour.

It’s perhaps possible that the merchet fee was a vestige of a much older custom in continental europe, of buying off the feudal overlord, but there is no evidence for such a practice.

Nevertheless, the idea has featured in many works of historical fiction, such as the factually inept 1965 Charlton heston film The War Lord.

David Rayner, Canterbury, Kent.

QUESTION In the early 19th century, there was a scandal involving the Bishop of Clogher. What is the story? FurTher to the earlier answer, at the time of this scandal, Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh was accused of a remarkably similar crime. he had picked up a soldier, whom he later claimed he had thought to be a woman.

Pushed by the fear of public disgrace, Castlereagh suffered a breakdown and cut his own throat on August 12, 1822.

James Burke, London SE22.