Assize of Arms of 1181

The Assize of Arms of 1181 was a proclamation of King Henry II of England concerning the obligation of all freemen of England to possess and bear arms in the service of king and realm and to swear allegiance to the king, on pain of "vengeance, not merely on their lands or chattels, but on their limbs." The assize stipulated precisely the military equipment that each man should have according to his rank and wealth. The assize effectively revived the old Anglo‐Saxon fyrd duty. The Assize established restrictions on weapon ownership by Jews, terms of inheritance, and prohibition of exports of arms, ships and timber.

"Every knight was forced to arm himself with coat of mail, and shield and lance; every freeholder with lance and hauberk, every burgess and poorer freeman with lance and iron helmet. This universal levy of the armed nation was wholly at the disposal of the king for the purposes of defence." “By his Assize of Arms Henry restored the Ancient Anglo-Saxon Militia System, and supplied the requisite counterbalance to the military power of the great feudatories, which, notwithstanding the temptation to avoid service by payment of scutage, they were still able and too willing to maintain. ”—-( Early Plantagenets) “ In all these measures (Assize of Arms, &c.) we may trace one main object, the strengthening of the Royal power, and one main means, or directing principle—the doing so by increasing the safety and security of the people. Whatever was done to help the people, served to reduce the power of the great feudal baronage, to disarm their forces, to abolish their jurisdictions, to diminish their chances of tyranny.”—(Early Plantagenets)"

The Act reads as follows:

Henry II came from a Norman line of kings and inherited the kingship of England which had fallen into Norman hands after the Battle of Hastings in 1066. This turned out to be the last successful foreign invasion of England.

England had been a unified nation for only a short time prior to this. It had been successfully invaded and conquered with military power from Roman Empire, with periodic incursions from Gaul, over about 400 years. This was followed with periodic waves of Viking invasions. It was not until the end of the first millennium that England had become unified by the conjoining of various local kingdoms and defeat of the many kingdoms in Northern and Eastern England paying Danegeld and having some ties (which became quite loose over time) to Viking kings on the continent. It is not clear cut who was the first King of England. Offa and Athelstan are strong candidates. History would have told Henry of the earlier Viking invasions along the North Sea, the English Channel (including Normandy) and the Irish Sea (Ireland and Wales). Because his immediate ancestors had themselves conquered England, he was well aware of the potential for external threats to his kingdom, as well as the more common risk of divided loyalties among those beneath him.

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