During Henry I's reign the Anglo-Norman nobility as a group was changing, reflecting twelfth-century demographic, military, and cultural changes, but also responding to specifically “English” developments in royal government. Increasingly, the king relied upon a group of men, familiares, most of whom were more dependent upon royal favor than their own patrimony for their position in society. The king's use of patronage in turn affected the composition of the nobility by creating nobles or providing the means for mobility within the class. To what extent, however, did this occur, and could anyone rely on the king and his court to be the major source of mobility and wealth? To find out it is necessary to see who within the nobility benefitted the most from different types of royal favor, and whether Henry I's familiares formed a separate group or network within the nobility, set apart not only by their curial behavior but by their feudal and family connections. It is an aspect of the family behavior which will be examined here and be fit into the larger question in subsequent work.
If the familiares received favor desired by others and did not blend into the larger class through lifestyle and alliances then they were an obvious target for anti-royal sentiment. R.W. Southern, in the article which in many ways revived Anglo-Norman historical inquiry, showed how a few familiares did rise to great and obvious wealth through royal favor. Administrative developments affected not only individuals—“new men,” “old men”—but families.