ABSTRACT
The landed resources of the medieval English monarchy are, by long-established custom among English historians, normally designated the ‘royal demesne’. The emergence of a concept of royal demesne in Angevin England seems to have been the product of fiscal changes, of developments in an expanding system of national taxation. The government of the dynamic Angevins took up and primarily developed the specialized levies each framed to exploit to the full a certain group interest in the community. The idea of a medieval English royal demesne which first evolved as a unit of Angevin taxation finds no support in the generally accepted history of the evolution of English national finances. In considering the true nature and significance of royal landholding in England from 1066 one must begin by stressing that the Norman Conquest conquered and unified the whole country in a sense and to a degree which never applied in medieval France or Germany.
