A History of Public Administration

Volume II: From the Eleventh Century to the Present Day

E.N. Gladden

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429751325
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

First published in 1972, the object of this work is to provide a history of public administration from earliest times up to the present day. The survey, necessarily selective, is broadly based, ranging from the prehistoric cave-dwellers to twentieth-century administration. Viewpoints are varied to bring in the several levels and spheres of operation; namely, directional and personnel, organizational and technical, biographical and theoretical.

The work is in two volumes. Volume One covers the main civilizations of the Middle East, India, China and the West up to the eleventh century A.D. Volume Two, continuing the same field, extends its scope to include the civilizations of pre-Columbian America, the colonial empire and international administration.

At a time when the scope of public administration is continually expanding, and more research is being carried out into administrative problems, much can be learned from the administrative lessons of the past. Dr. E.N. Gladden, a retired civil servant, has designed this work to integrate a vast and diverse subject.

Chapter 1

Medieval Europe:
Age of Experiment — A.D. 1000 to 1500

With the fading, as early as the ninth century, of Charlemagne’s heroic vision of a rehabilitated central power in the image of Imperial Rome, stretches of Western Europe had subsided into the shades. To extract the essence of the administrative system of the times it is necessary to look to the localities, and, unfortunately for our present objective, records are meagre if not painfully defective. Apart from the dream-picture of the Holy Roman Empire and the actual extension of the temporal sway of the Church, flowing in to fill the institutional vacuum, centralized government was everywhere at a discount. Administration had become drastically localized. By the eleventh century the process had gone far and can appropriately be described, in the terms of Jacques Pirenne,¹ as a ‘tide of history’. Long-standing institutions were experiencing imperceptible modifications to cope with the developing social and economic situation, while new institutions were tentatively emerging to meet the new needs, for the fulfilment of which the older institutions were proving ineffective. There were compulsive movements at the back of a situation that resembles our present predicament.

Ellul² divides the medieval period in the West into two distinct phases, the first of which actually culminated during the eleventh century. The earlier phase had been characterized by shrinking populations, forest encroaching upon pasture, regressive economy with declining commerce and partial disappearance of money. Land is the only real wealth and society rests upon personal relationships. The central power becomes divided among numerous lesser powers, while the rights of the Seigneur increase. By the end of the eleventh century a radical change is taking place: population is increasing, commerce is expanding, there is greater mobility and commercial links are being resumed. The Crusades are a characteristic symptom of the new situation.

Feudal Society³

Yet we must avoid a natural tendency to overemphasize the differences between the two phases, bearing in mind a real possibility of exaggeration due to the paucity of records. Obviously in a situation where the basic unit was small and localized much administration was, as a matter of course, conducted verbally, while the flimsy nature of existing media and of the containing structures was not conducive to the survival of such day-to-day records as did exist.

To discover the administrative pattern of the age it is necessary first to examine the basic power unit, centred in the household of the Seigneur, or Lord. There was little that was new in this, apart from its wide proliferation, for, as we have already seen, even in Rome’s imperial period, public administration continued to emanate from the Emperor’s household, while the numerous seignorial counterparts of this later age owed much to the Carlovingian pattern.

The Seigneur’s household was self-supporting and dependent upon the holding of sufficient land to meet the household’s normal needs. The Seignory constituted a local power-centre wielding sufficient power to be able to defend itself from its neighbours. Thus each household became a self-contained unit, sufficient unto itself, although in practice interchange of commodities rarely ceased completely. As the central power weakened and conditions of anarchy spread, the powers of the Seigneur strengthened. The fortified household developed into the impregnable castle. In the eleventh century the ancient art of fortification was being rediscovered and shaped to meet the conditions of the Medieval world. At the same time, with the development of new methods of warfare, the household had to accommodate the magnate’s armed retainers, who supplied their own arms and horses but received subsistence from the demesne.

At the base of this feudal scheme was the fief, usually in the form of a strip of land, granted by the greater landowner to the lesser who became his vassal. The vassal, thus invested with land, entered the household of his superior, who afforded him protection. A hierarchy of such relationships developed. Where there was an overlord, or king, he stood at the top of the hierarchy, in which vassals at each level held allegiance to the lord immediately above him. But the lower feudatories were not responsible to the highest, until such time should arrive that the overlord was able to impose his control over the whole community and the feudal element ceased to predominate.

Feudalism was an antidote to anarchy but not necessarily a precondition of integration. It belonged not to a particular age but arose whenever the situation was suitable. Its pattern and development varied from place to place. Thus in Germany, where the myth of the Holy Roman Empire continued to hold sway long after its real power had waned, feudal relationships were weaker and the tendency was for overlordship to be parcelled among a large number of petty princes, so that national integration was to be delayed far into the modern age. Feudalism achieved its highest development in England and France, but in the former — assisted strongly by the retaining barrier of the English Channel — integration under a compulsive kingship had begun at an early stage. In any case feudalism’s general sway was on the wane almost everywhere in Europe by the middle of the thirteenth century.

Administratively the seignorial household began as a simple and essentially personal unit of direction and management. In England at least the personal aspect was maintained and institutionalization resisted, and there was no question of delegation of power to a major domo, or minion of the type of the Carlovingian mayor of the palace. But the division of labour operated no less dynamically and became every bit as complicated in the later stages of its development. To manage the demesne a division between the field worker and the administrator developed at an early stage, so that by the twelfth to thirteenth centuries a distinct secretariat had emerged, usually associated with the wardrobe, or strong place, where valuables and stores were taken care of. By the beginning of this period there would normally be a steward, a chamberlain and a constable, acting as estate manager, finance officer and security guard respectively. The two former offices tended to split up to cope with increasing work-loads, while the latter, which was often hereditary, lost importance with the growth of the King’s Peace.

A good general picture of the organization and staffing of a simple baronial household is given by Tout⁴ in describing that ‘of the lord and lady of the considerable Lincolnshire barony of Easby’.

‘There was a common establishment for the lord and his wife, presided over by a steward, who was a knight, for whom two possible deputies were provided. The chief clerical officer was the “wardrober”, who jointly with the steward examined every night the daily expenditure of the household, which was only to be “engrossed” when the steward and his chief deputy were both present. The wardrober was also the chief auditor, or controller, of the steward’s account. He too has his deputy, the clerk to the offices. Besides these there was a chief buyer, a marshal, two pantrymen and butlers, two cooks and larderers, a laundress, a saucer and a poulterer, two ushers and chandlers, a porter, a baker, a brewer and two farriers. Nearly all these officers had each his boy (or in the case of the woman her girl) attendant, and when an office was duplicated, one of the holders was to remain in the household, and the other to follow the lord. An important personage was the chaplain and almoner, who was, when required, to give help in writing letters and other documents and act as deputy to the wardrober in his absence, by serving as controller of the expenses of the household. When the lord was away from home the chaplain was to examine the expenses of the household and account to the wardrober before the steward. His deputies as chaplain were to be “the friars with their boy clerk . . .” Here we have the bare minimum of organization, but the establishment included both household and wardrobe, an incipient secretariat and a system of control and registry.’

There were in fact simpler organizations than that of Easby and many that were much more complex, all reflecting a long historic development as well as exemplifying the current practices of the households of the king and the nobility. One cannot fail to be struck by the high sophistication of the normal staffing pattern. Personnel management was already an advanced art even if little was said about it.

In the Anglo-Saxon Context

By 1066, when William, Duke of Normandy, crossed the English Channel and established his power in southern Britain, the existing feudal institutions there were already supplemented by a well-conceived pattern of local administration and the beginnings of an integrated administration under the king at the centre. What William did was to bring a new vision to the land and, while reinforcing the feudal relationships in order to establish firmly the upstart power of his Norman followers, to take such steps towards the strengthening of the central administration as would eventually lead to the feudal ‘system’s’ supersession.

Despite the proliferation of officials in the seignory and the growing demand for secretarial abilities, household administration was essentially personal, resting upon oral agreement and instructions. This was the very nature of the administrative process rather than the outcome of the particular cultural quality of Anglo-Saxon society, whose backwardness has probably been much exaggerated by the non-survival of contemporary records. Naturally the Normans were not slow in boosting their own superiority, and the contrast between the two stages was undoubtedly emphasized by the introduction of the French language as the normal instrument of government. Moreover widespread Norman ignorance of the existing Anglo-Saxon texts would lead them naturally to exaggerate the gap. The conduct of the business of the Church in Latin, which was to continue long after Norman-French had become an anachronism in the land, served further to favour the use of the two foreign tongues at the expense of the vernacular, especially as churchmen were practically the only experts in the administrative art.

In his efforts to strengthen the royal government the new king was conscious of the need for a more effective administration. As his chief means he chose to use a special office and the issue of the sealed writ. This office was the Chancery, whose main function was the initiation of action through its chief official, the Lord Chancellor — an appointment dating back to the reign of Edward the Confessor — who combined the duties of the King’s Chief Secretary, Chief Chaplain and Custodian of the Great Seal. It has been suggested that in making these changes William found the chief obstacles less in the resentments of the conquered English than in the centrifugal ideas which his own followers had brought with them from Normandy.⁵

William figures in history as an energetic innovator, as no doubt he was, but it is as well to remember that the effectiveness of innovation — one might almost write revolution — depends very much upon the availability of an effective system of administration. Having cracked the Anglo-Saxon nut by a tour de force of military strategy, tempered no doubt with a little good fortune, William was fortunate in finding at hand a governing instrument which the Anglo-Saxons had brought to as high a pitch of efficiency as any in the West.⁶

In order to establish the authority of his notables as well as to introduce an effective system of taxation the king needed to know exactly what the situation was in the localities, for while the feudal institutions could hardly have been better devised to ensure that the local economy should work in good order, they were just as well devised to obscure the facts from the prying outsider. There had been no reason for them to operate otherwise since their real strength rested in their inherent informality and almost spontaneous capacity to achieve a high degree of local self-sufficiency. William had to find an answer to the serious practical problem of administrative integration and his main claim to fame in this sphere surely rests on the famous Domesday inquest initiated in the Council which he held at Gloucester towards the end of 1085, to investigate ‘the land, how it was peopled and by what sort of men’. In fact the king well understood from experience in his own personal demesne that effective management and financial control of the larger domain would not be possible without detailed information on the country’s resources.

We can hardly do better at this point than refer to the explanation of this momentous administrative operation given during the following century by Richard, Son of Nigel, in the famous treatise Dialogus de Scaccario, to which further reference will be made in the following section:

‘Domesday Book, about which you inquire, is the inseparable companion in the Treasury of the royal seal. The reason for its compilation was told me by Henry, Bishop of Winchester, as follows:

“When the famous William, ‘the Conqueror’ of England, the Bishop’s near kinsman, had brought under his sway the farthest limits of the island, and had tamed the minds of the rebels by awful examples, to prevent error from having free course in the future, he decided to bring the conquered people under the rule of written law. So, setting out before him the English Laws in their threefold...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Medieval Europe: Age of Experiment (A.D. 1000 to 1500)
• 2 Middle East: East-West impact (A.D. 1071 to 1683)
• 3 Sixteenth Century Europe (A.D. 1485 to 1603)
• 4 Early American Civilizations
• 5 The New Administration Begins to Emerge in Europe (A.D. 1610 to 1786)
• 6 China: Sung and After
• 7 Indian Statecraft (A.D. 1556 to 1853)
• 8 Age of Revolutions (A.D. 1649 to 1815)
• 9 Development of Modern Systems of Public Administration
• 10 Public Administration Adapting to the Needs of a New Age
• Index