¹ This is not the case for communes, for which see Wickham, C., Sleepwalking into a New World: The Emergence of Italian City Communes in the Twelfth Century (Princeton, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² See the survey in Reynolds, S., ‘The Historiography of the Medieval State’, in Companion to Historiography, ed. Bentley, M. (1997), 117–38Google Scholar. The most recent and wide-ranging position on medieval government is Bisson, T. N., The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship and the Origins of European Government (Princeton, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which, although putting forward a different explanation for the emergence of institutional government and being explicitly critical of Weber, nonetheless adopts an implicitly oppositional narrative (particularly 293–304). For the sharp distinction between public and private as underlying the medieval state outside of the historical discipline, see Mann, M., The Sources of Social Power, i: A History of Power from the Beginning to a.d. 1760 (Cambridge, 1986), 390–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ Strayer, J. R., On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State, with forewords by Tilly, C. and Jordan, W. C. (Princeton, 2005), 3–56Google Scholar; Bisson, T. N., ‘The Problem of Feudal Monarchy: Aragon, Catalonia, and France’, Speculum, 53 (1978), 460–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ By an aristocrat, I mean a lay (non-urban) elite, defined legally and socio-economically. For difficulties with the word ‘aristocratic’, see Reuter, T., ‘The Medieval Nobility in Twentieth-Century Historiography’, in Companion to Historiography, ed. Bentley, , 177–202Google Scholar; and in a German historiographical context,Reuter, T., ‘Forms of Lordship in German Historiography’, in Pour une anthropologie du prélèvement seigneurial dans les campagnes médiévales (XI^e – XIV^e siècles): réalités et représentations paysannes, ed. Bourin, M. and Martínez, P. Sopena (Paris, 2004), 51–61Google Scholar. I have retained it here because I am not making an argument about the phenomenon and/or practice of lordship. Aristocratic, however, remains a problematic adjective, having connotations with cultural behaviour and social ambition as much as formal status, and is certainly problematic in an urban perspective, where lay elites in towns were often distinguished from landed aristocrats (although in that sense it is helpful in this paper, which is not examining urban elites). For the increasing focus on bishops as key political actors, see Ambler, S. T., Bishops in the Political Community of England, 1213–1272 (Oxford, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ For example, Firnhaber-Baker, J., Violence and the State in Languedoc, 1250–1400 (Cambridge, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ Reuter, T., ‘The Medieval German Sonderweg? The Empire and its Rulers in the High Middle Ages’, in his Medieval Polities and Modern Mentalities, ed. Nelson, J. L. (Cambridge, 2006), 388–412CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ The literature is vast; see, for the traditional position, Halphen, L., ‘La place de la royauté dans le système féodal’, Revue historique, 172 (1933), 249–56Google Scholar; and Baldwin, J. W., The Government of Philip Augustus: Foundations of French Royal Power in the Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1986), 259–303Google Scholar. See also Poly, J.-P. and Bournazel, É., La mutation féodale (3rd edn, Paris, 2004), 204–23Google Scholar. For a new understanding of the transformation of homage over the twelfth century, see van Eickels, K., Vom inszenierten Konsens zum systematisierten Konflikt. Die englisch-französischen Beziehungen und ihre Wahrnehmung an der Wende vom Hoch-zum Spätmittelalter (Stuttgart, 2002)Google Scholar. For a new outline of the growth of French royal power, which anticipates much of what follows (although it concentrates on reconceptualising the eleventh century), see Barthélemy, D., Nouvelle histoire des Capétiens, 987–1214 (Paris, 2012), particularly 296–9, 321–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ Dejoux, M., ‘Gouverner par l'enquête en France, de Philippe Auguste aux derniers Capétiens’, French Historical Studies, 37 (2014), 271–302CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 298–9; for governmental personnel, see Baldwin, Government of Philip Augustus, 106–36.

⁹ Hilaire, J., La construction de l'état de droit dans les archives judiciaires de la cour de France au XIII^e siècle (Paris, 2011)Google Scholar, particularly 67–92; Harding, A., Medieval Law and the Foundations of the State (Oxford, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chs. 5 and 6.

¹⁰ Dejoux, M., Les enquêtes de saint Louis: gouverner et sauver son âme (Paris, 2014), 371–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has demonstrated the inquests' personally reparative aims, stressing their symbolic unifying power, which allowed for local complaints against the king, personalised through its officials, to be heard and pacified through acknowledgement without the explicit aim of reform, but which simultaneously operated as a force of subjection by placing the idea of government and royal authority at the heart of local society.

¹¹ Taylor, A., The Shape of the State in Medieval Scotland, 1124–1290 (Oxford, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with summary of argument at 438–55. The difference would not, however, be so profound at a local level: see Stringer, K. J., ‘Law, Governance and Jurisdiction’, in Northern England and Southern Scotland in the Central Middle Ages, ed. Stringer, K. J. and Winchester, A. J. L. (Woodbridge, 2017), 87–136Google Scholar, particularly 131–2.

¹² Taylor, Shape of the State, 169–72.

¹³ The defining approach remains R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonisation and Cultural Change, 950–1350 (1993), whose power came from its subtle treatment of ‘peripheral’ areas. For a comparative approach which emphatically does not adopt the framework of core/periphery, see Wickham, C., Medieval Europe (New Haven, 2016)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ See below pp. 60–1.

¹⁵ For the focus on juridical documents, see Kölzer, T., ‘Diplomatics’, in Handbook of Medieval Studies: Terms – Methods – Trends, ed. Classen, A. (Berlin, 2010), 405–23Google Scholar. That being said, diplomatics has expanded its reach to include non-juridical documents, as acknowledged in Guyotjeannin, O. and Morelle, L., ‘Tradition et réception de l'acte médiéval: jalons pour un bilan des recherches’, Archiv für Diplomatik, 53 (2007), 367–403Google Scholar.

¹⁶ The potential of the methods of diplomatics and palaeography to illuminate medieval communication more broadly is examined in, among many, Ruling the Script in the Middle Ages: Formal Aspects of Written Communication, ed. Barret, S., Stutzmann, D. and Vogeler, G. (Turnhout, 2017)Google Scholar. For particularly creative ways of thinking about legal norms and charter formulae, see Hyams, P. R., ‘The Charter as a Source for the Early Common Law’, Journal of Legal History, 12 (1991), 173–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hudson, J., Land, Law and Lordship in Anglo-Norman England (Oxford, 1994)Google Scholar; McHaffie, M. W., ‘Law and Violence in Eleventh-Century France’, Past and Present, 238 (2018), 3–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁷ Oram, R., Domination and Lordship: Scotland 1070 to 1230 (Edinburgh, 2007), 64–74Google Scholar, 108–22, 140–5.

¹⁸ Clanchy, M., From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–1307 (3rd edn, Oxford, 2013)Google Scholar; Bertrand, P., ‘À propos de la révolution de l'écrit (X^e – XIII^e siècles): considerations inactuelles’, Médiévales, 56 (2009), 75–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁹ The Charters of David I, 1124–53, and of his Son, Henry, Earl of Northumberland, 1139–52, ed. Barrow, G. W. S. (Woodbridge, 1999)Google Scholar; Regesta Regum Scotorum, i: The Acts of Malcolm IV, 1152–65, ed. G. W. S. Barrow (Edinburgh, 1960) (henceforth RRS, i); Regesta Regum Scotorum, ii: The Acts of William I, 1165–1214, ed. G. W. S. Barrow with collaboration of W. W. Scott (Edinburgh, 1971) (henceforth RRS, ii). These numbers do not include charters classified as spurious or non-contemporary but do include those which are, at present, being classed as non-contemporary either in their diplomatic or their palaeography as part of the research on the database for the AHRC-funded project, Models of Authority: Scottish Charters and the Emergence of Government, 1100–1250 (Grant Ref: AH/L008041/1, and online at www.modelsofauthority.ac.uk).

²⁰ For royal scribes, see RRS, ii, 88–90; discussed by Broun, D., Scottish Independence and the Idea of Britain from the Picts to Alexander III (Edinburgh, 2007), 191–206Google Scholar.

²¹ Baldwin, J., ‘The Kingdom of the Franks from Louis VI to Philip II (a) Crown and Government’, in The New Cambridge Medieval History, iv: c. 1024 – c. 1198, ed. Luscombe, D. and Riley-Smith, J. (Cambridge, 2004), 510–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 510–11, and n. 1.

²² Recueil des actes de Philippe I ^er, roi de France (1059–1108), ed. Prou, M. (Paris, 1908)Google Scholar; Recueil des actes de Louis VI, roi de France (1108–1137), ed. J. Dufour (4 vols., Paris, 1992–4). The acts of Louis VII have still not been edited but see Études sur les actes de Louis VII, ed. A. Luchaire (Paris, 1885). For Augustus, Philip, Recueil des actes de Philippe Auguste roi de France, ed. Delaborde, H.-F., Petit-Dutaillis, C., Monicat, J. and Nortier, M. (6 vols., Paris, 1916–2005)Google Scholar (henceforth Recueil). For the registers, see Les registres de Philippe Auguste, ed. Baldwin, J. with Gasparri, F., Nortier, M. and Lalou, E. (Paris, 1992)Google Scholar; Baldwin, J., ‘Les premiers registres Capétiens de Philippe Auguste à Louis IX’, in Décrire, inventorier, enregistrer entre Seine et Rhine au moyen âge: formes, fonctions et usages des écrits de gestion, ed. Hermand, X., Nieus, J.-F. and Renard, É. (Paris, 2012), 105–22Google Scholar.

²³ Dufour, J., ‘Peut-on parler d'une organisation de la chancellerie de Philippe Auguste?’, Archiv für Diplomatik, 41 (1995), 249–61Google Scholar.

²⁴ Bautier, R.-H., ‘Les actes de la chancellerie royale française sous les règnes de Louis VII (1137–80) et Philippe Auguste (1180–1223)’, in Typologie der Königsurkunden, ed. Bistřický, J. (Olmütz, 1998), 99–113Google Scholar, at 106–7, 110.

²⁵ For the issue in Scotland, see Broun, D., ‘The Adoption of Brieves in Scotland’, in Charters and Charter Scholarship in Britain and Ireland, ed. Flanagan, M. T. and Green, J. A. (Basingstoke, 2005), 164–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hammond, M., ‘The Adoption and Routinization of Scottish Royal Charter Production for Lay Beneficiaries, 1124–95’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 36 (2014), 91–115Google Scholar; for France, see, among many, Reimitz, H., History, Frankish Identity and the Framing of Western Ethnicity, 550–850 (Cambridge, 2015), 98–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁶ My preliminary attempt to make sense of it is in Taylor, Shape of the State, 176–87, and see also the insights in Reynolds, S., ‘Fiefs and Vassals in Scotland: A View from Outside’, Scottish Historical Review, 82 (2003), 176–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁷ For an explanation, see Broun, D., ‘Statehood and Lordship in “Scotland” before the Mid-Twelfth Century’, Innes Review, 66 (2015), 1–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 20–4.

²⁸ Baldwin, Government of Philip Augustus, 260–6, although see Barthélemy, Nouvelle histoire, 289–322. This is despite the vast amount which has been done on ‘les modalités de l'intégration’. See, as an example, La royauté capétienne et le Midi au temps de Guillaume de Nogaret. Actes du colloque de Montpellier et Nîmes (29 et 30 novembre 2013), ed. B. Moreau and J. Théry (Nîmes, 2015). For the position on royal homage, see Halphen, ‘La place de la royauté’; Baldwin, Government of Philip Augustus, 259–303.

²⁹ What follows summarises the content and argument made in Taylor, Shape of the State, 26–83, 102–13, 157–64, 172–87.

³⁰ For extensive and intensive power, see Mann, Sources of Social Power, i, 7–8.

³¹ Schieffer, R., ‘Das Lehnswesen in den deutschen Königsurkunden von Lothar III. bis Fridrich I’, in Das Lehnswesen im Hochmittelalter: Forschungskonstrukte – Quellenbefunde – Deutungsrelevanz, ed. Dendorfer, J. and Deutinger, R. (Ostfildern, 2010), 79–90Google Scholar; Arnold, B., Princes and Territories in Medieval Germany (Cambridge, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chs. 1 and 3; The Origins of German Principalities, 1100–1350: Essays by German Historians, ed. Loud, G. A. and Schenk, J. (Oxford, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vollrath, H., ‘Politische Ordnungsvorstellungen und politisches Handeln im Vergleich. Philipp II. August von Frankreich und Friedrich Barbarossa im Konflikt mit ihren mächtigsten Fürsten’, in Political Thought and the Realities of Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Canning, J. and Oexle, O.-G. (Göttingen, 1998), 33–52Google Scholar.

³² What follows accepts the arguments presented in Hammond, ‘Adoption and Routinization’.

³³ But what precisely that meant was not made explicit, although one can reasonably assume that everyone was expected to know (or at least have the capacity to interpret) what customs Ranulf Meschin had and how Udard had held the land. The point, however, was that it was left open. See Broun, D., ‘The Property Records in the Book of Deer as a Source for Early Scottish Society’, in Studies on the Book of Deer, ed. Forsyth, K. (Dublin, 2008), 313–60Google Scholar, at 328–9.

³⁴ The emergence of in feudo et hereditate as a standard part of Scottish royal charters is difficult to track precisely, partly because the extent to which early royal charters were later reworked is only just being worked out. In David's reign, there are four single sheet charters surviving, of which three (Charters of David I, nos. 16, 54, 210) are products of the nascent Scottish writing office, while a fourth (Charters of David I, no. 53) seems to be a later reworking by Durham of no. 54. Of the three, therefore, no. 54 (1136×7) contains the phrase ‘In feudo ⁊ In hereditate sibi ⁊ heredibus’; while no. 210 contains the phrase ‘in feudo ⁊ hereditate illi ⁊ heredi suo’. There is no standardised form in Mael Coluim's reign either: the (contextually) famous charter of the king to Walter fitz Alan is an early thirteenth-century copy, containing an inflated text (RRS, i, no. 183). Yet the charter issued for Ralph Frebern (RRS, i, no. 256, issued 1162×4) does contain the phrase ‘in feudo⁊ hereditate’. This only survives as an eighteenth-century facsimile, although it is possible to detect the same hand which also drafted others of Mael Coluim's charters: Diplomata Scotiæ: Selectus Diplomatum et Numismatum Scotiæ Thesaurus, ed. J. Anderson (Edinburgh, 1739), plate 25. For this development in England, see Hudson, Land, Law and Lordship, 94–7.

³⁵ Inheritance limited to a single generation might have been used in royal charters of Mael Coluim IV (1153–65). The clearest example, however, survives in antiquary transcript, which has been tampered with (at least in the eschatocol); London, British Library, MS Harley, 4693, fo. 46r (printed RRS, i, no. 190).

³⁶ For the earlier chronology in England, see Hudson, Land, Law and Lordship, ch. 3.

³⁷ Discussed by many, but see the essential work of Barrow (ed.), RRS, ii, 49–51. The internal diplomatic of the only surviving text of the formula in Mael Coluim IV's reign (RRS, i, no. 184) is non-contemporary to the period, and represents, at the very least, an updating of the original charter.

³⁸ Some charters could be quite specific about the location of pits, see RRS, ii, no. 152; on the decline (or abolition) of the ordeal in Scotland, see Taylor, Shape of the State, 280–4.

³⁹ For a full examination of this, see D. Broun, ‘Kingdom and Identity: A Scottish Perspective’, in Northern England and Southern Scotland, ed. Stringer and Winchester, 31–85.

⁴⁰ The Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to 1707, gen. ed. K. Brown (St Andrews, 2011), 1318/27 (online at: www.rps.ac.uk/mss/1318/27 accessed 1 Oct. 2017), and Scottish Formularies, ed. A. A. M. Duncan, Stair Society 58 (Edinburgh, 2011), A20/21.

⁴¹ See Taylor, Shape of the State, chs. 5 and 6.

⁴² For Suger's statements in his de rebus in administratione gestis, see Oeuvres complètes de Suger, ed. A. Lecoy de la Marche (Paris, 1867), 161–2. For the notion that homagium distinguished the comes Normannie from the rex Francorum, see the Brevis Relatio on the c. 945 agreement (E. M. C. van Houts, ‘The Brevis Relatio de Guillelmo Nobilissimo Comite Normannorum, Written by a Monk of Battle Abbey, Edited with a Historical Commentary’, Camden Fifth Series 10 (1997), 5–48, at 45).

⁴³ For the performance of homage, see Gillingham, J., ‘Doing Homage to the King of France’, in Henry II: New Interpretations, ed. Harper-Bill, C. and Vincent, N. (Woodbridge, 2007), 63–84Google Scholar; Aurell, M., ‘Philippe Auguste et les Plantagenêt’, in Autour de Philippe Auguste, ed. Aurell, M. and Sassier, Y. (Paris, 2017), 27–69Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ See, as representative, Sassier, Y., ‘La corona regni: émergence d'une persona ficta dans la France du xii^e siècle’, in La puissance royale: image et pouvoir de l'antiquité au moyen âge, ed. Santinelli, E. and Schwentzel, C.-G. (Rennes, 2012), 99–110Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Hugh of Poitiers, Monumenta Vizeliacensia: textes relatifs à ‘l’histoire de l'abbaye de Vézelay, ed. R. B. C. Huygens (2 vols., Turnhout, 1976–80), trans. The Vézelay Chronicle, trans. Scott, J. and Ward, J. O. (Binghampton, 1992)Google Scholar, 242, 243.

⁴⁶ Most recently discussed in Lyon, entre empire et royaume (843–1601): textes et documents, ed. Charansonnet, A., Gaulin, J.-L., Mounier, P. and Rau, S. (Paris, 2015), 223–6Google Scholar, which includes full details on its preservation in the ‘Saint-Victor’ register.

⁴⁷ Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, vol. 16, new ed. Delisle, L. (Paris, 1878)Google Scholar, no. 161, p. 49.

⁴⁸ Lyon, entre empire et royaume, ed. Charansonnet, Gaulin, Mounier and Rau, 179–80, 183–7, 230–5.

⁴⁹ For Suger's role, see Sassier, ‘La corona regni’, 102–3.

⁵⁰ Y. Sassier, Structures du pouvoir, royauté et res publica: France, IX ^e– XII ^e siècle (Rouen, 2004), 215.

⁵¹ Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, vol. 16, 130–1: ‘Quid prodest in eodem corpore sic partis alterius provideri saluti, quod altera morbo depereat? Quasdam plerumque latius videmus serpere lues, et dum minus mala caventur, ex insperato sana putridis vitiari. Non sola Francia de regno vestro est, licet sibi nomen Regis specialius retinuerit. Est et Burgundia vestra. Nihil magis illi quam isti debetis.’

⁵² Paris, Archives Nationales, K24, no. 14 (paschal year 1167); calendared in Études, ed. Luchaire, no. 537, and printed in Monuments historiques, ed. J. Tardiff (Paris, 1866), no. 602. On its chirograph form, see Gasparri, F., L'écriture des actes de Louis VI, Louis VII et Philippe Auguste (Geneva and Paris, 1973), 116–17Google Scholar.

⁵³ For an earlier example, see Recueil Louis VI, no. 65.

⁵⁴ See the examples in Sassier, ‘La corona regni’, 103–4; and, most obviously, in the ‘golden bull’ issued for Aldebert, bishop of Mende in 1161, in which Aldebert acknowledged that his bishopric was held of the kingdom's crown (de corona regni nostri) and swore fidelitas (Layettes de Trésor des chartes, ed. A. Teulet (Paris, 1863) (henceforth Layettes), i, no. 168). The powers granted to Aldebert were great, but the personalised construction of the relationship between bishop, bishopric, king and crown is still present in the diploma, and it is of note that the celebratory short chronicle written around 1170 by a clerk of Mende does not mention this but instead ‘in perpetuum regiam potestatem plenamque juridictionem super omnes homines’; Chronicon breve de gestis Aldeberti, in Les miracles de Saint Privat, suivis des Opuscules d'Aldebert III, évêque de Mende, ed. C. Brunel (Paris, 1912), also discussed in Bisson, Crisis, 312–14, but with different emphases.

⁵⁵ See the examples in Études, ed. Luchaire, nos. 353, 537, 636.

⁵⁶ The earliest surviving appearance of in feodum et hominagium ligium seems to be the diploma partially copied into the Livre noir of Saint-Maur-des Fossés (s.xiii); printed Recueil, i, no. 121, issued in the paschal year 1184. The orthography is homagium ligium, which may be significant, or may just be the copyist's preference; I have not examined the manuscript. For other early examples, mostly preserved in the registers (particularly A), see Recueil, ii, nos. 556, 560, 764, 770, 793, 794 (both cancelled), 797, 798, 801. The 1184 example is important, as it predates the loss of the French royal archives at Frétéval in 1194.

⁵⁷ For the tendency to over-typologise diplomatic developments under Philip Augustus, see S. Barret and J.-F. Moufflet, ‘Forms, Typology and Normalisation: French Royal Charters in the Thirteenth Century’, in Identifying Governmental Forms in Europe, c. 1100 – c. 1300: Palaeography, Diplomatics and History, ed. A. Taylor, forthcoming.

⁵⁸ See Aurell, ‘Philippe Auguste’, 55–60, for its use in French high politics.

⁵⁹ The appearance of the formula in feodum et hominagium ligium and other, similar, formulae has been noticed before, but can be analysed as Norman-inspired phenomena, resulting from Philip's conquest of the duchy in 1202–3, although many survive in Register A, which is very Norman-focused. See Reynolds, S., Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford, 1994), 276–8Google Scholar, and scholarship cited there. See particularly Bisson, ‘The Problem of Feudal Monarchy’, 473–7, and revisited in Bisson, Crisis, 305–6, which states that the ‘management of vassals, fiefs and tenurial obligations could easily be integrated with new techniques of power’. The difference is that I would argue that the ‘management of vassals’ etc. was part of the new techniques of power.

⁶⁰ Recueil, iii, no. 1251. Charter here is used generically.

⁶¹ However, it is of note that some earlier examples did, see ibid., ii, nos. 734–5.

⁶² See, for example, the famous diploma about the county of Amiens, in Recueil, i, no. 139, also no. 445. The relationship between counts and (arch)bishoprics is also interesting. In 1179 (at Lateran III), William, archbishop of Reims, obtained a papal bull from Alexander III stating that Henry, count of Champagne, was ‘known to have a fief from your church, which he is held to do liege homage (ligium hominium) to you, save the king's fidelitas’. The precise wording of this bull would have been drafted by Reims; see Documents relatifs au comté de Champagne et de Brie, 1172–1361, ed. A. Longnon (Paris, 1901), i, 466 (no. 2).

⁶³ The obvious point that the concept of liege homage itself was not a primarily French royal formulation still needs to be stated; see the liege homage of Simon, duke of Lotharingia, kinsman of Philip of Flanders, ‘against all men save the emperor’ in an agreement made in Philip's court in 1179 (De oorkonden der graven van Vlaanderen (juli 1128–september 1191), iii: Regering van Filips van de Elzas, ed. T. de Hemptinne, A. Verhulst and L. de Mey (Brussels, 2009), no. 536, 29–31; online at www.diplomatica-belgica.be/, ID 8617: accessed 31 Jan. 2018). The earliest datable mention of ligius has been suggested by West to come from the region west of the Meuse in 1055; West, C., Reframing the Feudal Revolution: Political and Social Transformation between Marne and Moselle, c. 800 – c. 1100 (Cambridge, 2013), 210–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and n. 48.

⁶⁴ The earliest is from 1172, and is printed in Documents, ed. Longnon, i, 1–53.

⁶⁵ Cartulaire de l'abbaye de Saint-Aubin, ed. B. de Brousillon and E. Lelong (3 vols., Angers, 1896–1903), i, nos. 73, 127; Chartae Galliae also provides examples from the abbey of Saint-Crépin-le-Grand, Soissons: Acte n°212797 in Chartae Galliae: www.cn-telma.fr/chartae-galliae/charte212797/ [1146], and the cathedral of Amiens in 1167 (Acte n°201735 in Chartae Galliae): www.cn-telma.fr/chartae-galliae/charte201735.

⁶⁶ Recueil, ii, no. 608.

⁶⁷ The Charters of Duchess Constance of Brittany and her Family, 1171–1221, ed. J. Everard and M. Jones (Woodbridge, 1999), A15. In July 1202, Arthur had performed liege homage to Philip for his ‘feodum of Brittany, Anjou, Maine and the Touraine’, recorded in one of Philip's charters, and later transcribed in abbreviated form in Register A. Recueil, ii, nos. 723, 829. The phrase propter fidele servitium does begin to appear in Philip's acts from 1203–4; it may well be that the influence here was (broadly defined) Angevin, as a slightly different version of it was standard among English royal acta and was used in Arthur's charters as pro fideli servitio.

⁶⁸ See Layettes, i, nos. 713, 734, 1033.

⁶⁹ For the adoption of custom-formulae in actes, see Power, D., The Norman Frontier in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries (Cambridge, 2004), 144–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar. But it was still optional. Non-royal counterparts to royal documents could remove the statement, as occurred in Stephen, bishop of Noyon's notification of 1213 which contains the famous phrase that the kings of France were not accustomed to do homage: whereas Philip's diploma (surviving in Register C: Paris, Archives Nationales, J J7, fo. 56r) describes this as the ‘usage and custom of the kingdom of France’ (Recueil, iii, no. 1309), Bishop Stephen's notification simply calls it the ‘usage and custom approved until this day’ (Layettes, i, no. 1053).

⁷⁰ Recueil, iii, no. 1083.

⁷¹ Petot, P., ‘L'ordonnance du 1^er mai 1209’, Recueil de Travaux offerts à M. Clovis Brunel (2 vols., Paris, 1955), ii, 371–80Google Scholar, particularly 376–9.

⁷² Recueil, iv, no. 1438. For a recent discussion of the meaning of ‘pares’, see The Cartulary of Countess Blanche of Champagne, ed. Evergates, T. (Toronto, 2010), 18–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷³ The details of this complex and longstanding case are summarised in Evergates, T., The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne 1100–1300 (Philadelphia, 2007), 34–42Google Scholar, 284–92.

⁷⁴ Philip's commands are found in Recueil, iv, nos. 1437–8, and Cartulary of Countess Blanche, ed. Evergates, nos. 285–6; see also the table found at ibid., 19.

⁷⁵ Cartulary of Countess Blanche, ed. Evergates, nos. 24, 39–47, 396–401. Only the seal of one of the originals survives as a fragment (that of Gaucher, count of Saint-Pol: Paris, Archives Nationales, J198, no. 36).

⁷⁶ Paris, Archives Nationales, J198, no. 38 (printed Cartulary of Countess Blanche, ed. Evergates, no. 39). The same extra spotlight was given to the archbishop of Reims in his deed (Archives Nationales, J198, no. 34; Cartulary of Countess Blanche, ed. Evergates, no. 396).

⁷⁷ Paris, Archives Nationales, J198, no. 36 (printed Cartulary of Countess Blanche, ed. Evergates, no. 44). John, count of Beaumont's deed calls her ‘domina nostra’ (cartulary copy only: Cartulary of Countess Blanche, ed. Evergates, no. 40); William, count of Joigny, also calls her ‘karissima domina nostra’ (Archives Nationales J209, no. 21; Cartulary of Countess Blanche, ed. Evergates, no. 43).

⁷⁸ The originals are ibid., nos. 39, 41, 43–4, 46, 396–7, all kept in the Archives Nationales; see also the brief but extremely pertinent discussion in Cartulary of Countess Blanche, ed. Evergates, 17.

⁷⁹ For Anglicization, see Davies, R. R., The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles, 1093–1343 (Oxford, 2001), 142–71Google Scholar.

⁸⁰ For the state of the field in 2013, see the extremely full analysis in Hammond, Matthew, ‘Introduction: The Paradox of Medieval Scotland, 1093–1286’, in New Perspectives on Medieval Scotland, 1093–1286, ed. Hammond, M. (Woodbridge, 2013), 1–52Google Scholar; see further Davies, J. R., ‘Royal Government in Scotland and the Development of Diplomatic Forms, 1094–1249’, in Identifying Governmental Forms, ed. Taylor, ; Taylor, , Shape of the State, 446–9Google Scholar; Hammond, M., ‘Domination and Conquest? The Scottish Experience in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, in The English Isles: Cultural Transmission and Political Conflict in Britain and Ireland, 1100–1500, ed. Duffy, S. and Foran, S. (Dublin, 2013), 68–83Google Scholar.

⁸¹ Stringer, ‘Law, Governance, and Jurisdiction’, 104–29.

⁸² To list only two: Pryce, H., ‘Welsh Rulers and European Change, c. 1100–1282’, in Power and Identity in the Middle Ages: Essays in Memory of Rees Davies, ed. Pryce, H. and Watts, J. (Oxford, 2007), 37–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bagge, S., From Viking Stronghold to Christian Kingdom: State Formation in Norway, c. 900–1330 (Copenhagen, 2010)Google Scholar.

⁸³ The role of university-educated masters (in law) in royal administration has been identified as a catalyst for change; see Baldwin, J. W., ‘Studium et regnum: The Penetration of University Personnel into French and English Administration at the Turn of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, Revue des études islamiques, 44 (1976), 199–215Google Scholar; O. Deschamps, ‘L'essor des droits savants à l'époque de Philippe Auguste’, in Autour de Philippe Auguste, ed. Aurell and Sassier, 145–68. However, the precise intellectual inheritance of these formulae needs more consideration, and there is no space to do so here. Reynolds argues that the study of Libri Feudorum had little effect on growing professional government in the French kingdom, and argues that the values about the kingdom and royal authority which underpinned thirteenth-century professional government emerged from the ‘ideas, values and practices…in twelfth-century and earlier sources’, Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, 258–322, at 320–1.

⁸⁴ In Seeing like a State, James C. Scott argued that one major aspect of the modern state (and its fatal flaw) was its necessary ambition to ‘make a society legible, to arrange the population in ways that simplified the classic state functions of taxation, conscription and the prevention of rebellion’, which necessarily involved ignoring local knowledge. Scott's work conceptualises these legible simplifications as maps, and remarks on the ‘power of maps to transform as well as merely to summarize the facts that they portray’: Scott, J. C., Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, 1998)Google Scholar, quotations at 2, 87. Scott's work is not often used when thinking about the Middle Ages, but the twin ideas of ‘legibility’ and ‘simplification’ are extremely useful here: the point of a formalised idea of aristocratic power outlined here was not to describe its realities and varieties but to claim it as ruled power, and, in effect, transform the phenomenon.

⁸⁵ See also Broun, ‘Kingdom and Identity’, 73–4.

⁸⁶ Maxim Bolt, ‘Fluctuating Formality: Anthropology and the Structure of Difference’, The Malinowski Memorial Lecture, London School of Economics, 17 May 2018.

⁸⁷ See, with different emphases, Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, 288–95, 316–19, 320–2, 479–92.

⁸⁸ See Garnett, G., Conquered England: Kingship, Succession and Tenure, 1066–1166 (Oxford, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hudson, Land, Law and Lordship. For Germany, see Arnold, Princes and Territories, ch. 3; and, more generally, Bisson, Crisis, 295–9.

⁸⁹ Bagge, From Viking Stronghold to Christian Kingdom.

⁹⁰ Chenard, G., L'administration d'Alphonse de Poitiers, 1241–1271 (Paris, 2017)Google Scholar.