In this year, king Henry was in Windsor at Christmas, and wore his crown there…. The king spent Easter at Kingsthorpe near Northhampton…. The king spent Whit Sunday at St. Albans. Thereafter, at midsummer, he went with his levies into Wales…. Thereafter he came to Winchester… Thereafter he went oversea [sic] into Normandy.
(Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, sub anno 1114, versions H and E.)
This fairly representative account of the travels of an Anglo-Norman king in his dominions during the course of one year is testimony to the peripatetic character of royal and ducal administrations in the eleventh- and twelfth-centuries. But, like other sources used in isolation, it barely indicates the intensity of itinerating government reached during the long reign of Henry I (1100–1135), and which was maintained at a heightened pitch in the chaotic decades to come.
Modern historians have recognized that itineration was fundamental to medieval kingship and that it was crucial to the governance of a geographically disparate realm, as kings divided their time between historically separate regions. Itineration was a practical device in the absence of fully-developed governmental institutions as well as an economic necessity, for in partially monetarized economies, it was not always possible to move goods easily from county districts to main centers of power.
Only a handful of recent, comprehensive studies of government in Norman and Angevin England have touched on the subject of itineration. David C. Douglas concentrated on the men who comprised the royal household and who attended meetings of the royal curia in his analyses of William the Conqueror's (1066–1087) personal kingship.