were trodden into the condition of slaves. It has been questioned by some historians whether the accession of William the Norman could fairly be called a conquest. Edward the Confessor, to erect a barrier against the ambition of the son of his old enemy Godwin, had marked out William, who was his kinsman, as his successor, and had made proposals to him on the subject, though, with the feebleness of purpose which characterized him, he did not carry the arrangement to formal completion. The Norman looked on himself as rightful claimant of the English throne, -as the man to whom the kingdom was to be bequeathed, as is shown by his interview with Harold, and the oath to maintain his pretensions which he exacted from that noble when he accidentally fell into his power. When Edward died in 1066, Harold, indeed, the former governor of Essex, heedless of his oath, seized the sceptre and was anointed king, apparently with the acquiescence of the nation; but after his defeat and death at Hastings, William stepped quietly to the throne, and took the oath customary with the Saxon and Danish sovereigns. So far the resistance offered may be considered little more than the turmoil which usually accompanied the commencement of a fresh reign. The new king began his rule in a spirit of moderation. Soon after his arrival he took up his residence at Barking Abbey, then a place of great repute and splendour. There many of the Saxon nobles and great men of the land went and swore fealty to him, and were reinstated or confirmed in their possessions. His purpose at that time appears to have been to quietly consolidate his sway. Circumstances, however, compelled him to play the conqueror. The restless dislike in the country of a foreign king; the frequent insurrections; perhaps more than all the craving of the Norman band, who looked upon all the property of the kingdom as fair spoil; brought on a general confiscation of estates and change of owners in this county. The plunder was carried on throughout all the land. Commissions went forth to report on all those who had given their support to Harold, and pronounce the confiscation of their estates; and from the large possessions which the family of Godwin held here, and the influence it exercised over the other landowners, scarcely an Essex Saxon appears to have survived the ordeal. The proud Earlderman and the rich Thane were swept from the county; and thenceforth we read only of Counts, and Earls, and Barons, Esquires, and vassals,―terms connected with the grinding feudal system, and the glittering but iron age of chivalry.

No special record has been left of the proceedings in Essex;

but we may form some idea of the extent of the spoliation, and the feeling of almost stupor that would come over the county by imagining all the noble families and landed proprietors whose names are so familiar to us-the Westerns and Rayleighs, and Petres and Maynards, the Tyrells, the Du Canes, and the Bramstons, and all the long roll of the county Squires, turned from their own homes into the highways, exposed to the contempt of a conquering Russian soldiery, while Menschikoffs, and Orlonoffs, and others whose names sound as uncouthly to us as did those of the steel-clad Normans to the Saxon ear of old, set themselves down in their warm halls and lorded it over their ancient patrimonies. This was the character of the landed revolution effected. Suspicion of a feeling averse to William was taken as positive proof of guilt by Commissioners whose friends and relatives were waiting for the property they confiscated. "Ancient and honourable families were reduced to beggary," says the historian before referred to; and in Domesday Book, made a few years after, we do not find in the roll of the landowners of Essex a single name that carries with it a Saxon sound. The burgesses of the towns escaped more easily. They were felt to be necessary, because the military Norman could not stoop to trade. The common people, too, "were not massacred but protected;" but then as they had nothing to lose, and were looked upon as part of the stock of the manor, necessary to cultivate the estate for the new owner, there was not much magnanimity in this sort of mercy. The Conquest did not materially alter the state of slavery in the county; the lands were transferred to Norman masters and the slaves went with them. Amongst those who shared the landed spoils of the county were the king's brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, "the mitred plunderer," as he has been called, who was presented with 39 of the Essex lordships. Eustace, the Earl of Boulogne, received amongst other possessions the manor of Bundish Hall, Radwinter; part of the lands at Ashdon, with the manor of Newnham; the greater part of the parish of Elmdon; the parish of Crishall; the fordship of Chipping Ongar; the parishes of Fyfield and Lambourn; Stanford Rivers Hall; lands in Harlow and Latton; and the manor of Great Parndon. William de Warrenne took the parishes of Little Wenden and Leaden Roothing; two manors in High and Aythorp Roothing, which the Conqueror wrested from the monastery of Ely, because it sheltered some English who would not submit to him; a manor in Little Canfield; Househam Hall, in Matching; and other large possessions. Eudo Dapifer, a son of the king's steward,

.

who became a great friend and patron of the town of Colchester, had for his portion lands and houses in that borough, with 25 lordships, spreading over the parishes of Henham, Takely, Quendon, Arkesdon, Norton Mandeville, Kelvedon Hatch, Greensted Hall, near Ongar; the manor of Folly, at Great Dunmow, &c. Geoffry de Mandeville received the lordship of Walden, and was the first who gave life to that place; lands and a manor in Henham; the manors of Fernham and Walkers, in Farnham; Newton Hall and Bigods, Great Dunmow; the lands of Little Easton; manors in High Easter; the parish of Mashbury; Rookwood Hall, in Abbess Roothing; Shelly Hall; Stock Hall, Matching; with other manors spread over various parts of the county, amounting altogether to 40 lordships. Robert Gernon had the whole of Stansted Mountfitchet, and built a castle there; to which were attached the lordships of Springfield, Margaretting, Easthorp, Birch, Wivenhoe, Leyton, East and West Ham, Chingford, Chigwell, &c.; he took the surname of Mountfitchet from his chief seat. Alberic de Vere, who founded the mighty Earldom of Oxford, received lands and manors in Radwinter, Wimbish, Ugley, and Canfield; the manor of Garnish Hall, Margaret Roothing; Down Hall, Hatfield Broad Oak; with the castle and parish of Great Canfield, besides large possessions around Hedingham, where he settled and reared his baronial castle. Ralph Baynard obtained lands about Wimbish, Henham, and Wenden Lofts; Ralph Peverel at Hatfield, Debden, Chickney, &c. Suene had the great barony of Rayleigh, where according to the custom of most of the new comers, he built a castle, and his other possessions included the half-hundred of Clavering, the lordship of Hill Hall, Theydon, and Little Hallingbury Hall. Thus grim warriors, palace favourites, some of the meanest births and lowest stations, one at least who took off the king's hands his concubine when he was tired of her, became the lords of Essex, and occupied its castles and manors. Of all the 90 owners of the soil whose names are given in Domesday Book, not one of them is that of an old proprietor, save, perhaps, that of Suene, the Dane, who having adroitly trimmed his sails and tacked about when William landed, was permitted to retain his estates, and became the first Sheriff after the Conquest. A few of the names in that ancient roll have something of a Saxon sound, but we shall find, says Morant, "if we look into the places where they are mentioned, that they had the estates of Saxons dispossessed."

Domesday Book, so often referred to, is a record of all the estates in the kingdom after they had been thus re-settled.

It was made by Commissioners, who were occupied for six years in the work, and the returns in each district were made by juries of freemen. It describes the extent of the land, the state it was then in, whether meadow, pasture, wood, or arable, the name of the proprietor, the tenure by which it was held, and the value at which it was estimated. There were the Great and Little Domesday Books, the latter of which contains the survey of Essex; and it is still taken as evidence of decisive authority when an appeal can be made to its pages. Morant gives the following as the style of record in this noble work of tyranny:

M.

P. xxx.

erchingas tenet sep. Sca.

hid. Jc. iiii car. in dino. mo. iii. & iiiita posset fieri. Ic. lxx. car. hom. mo. lxviii. Ic. c. uill. mo. cxl. Ic. l. bor. mo. lxxxx. Ic. x. ser. mo. vi. Silu. m. porc. c. ac. pr. ii. mol. i pisc. ii runc. xxxiiii au. cl. por.

xxiiii. cap. x. uasa apu.

In modern language the entry reads thus:

cxiiii. oues.

"Becontree Hundred. St. Mary (Abbey of Barking) always holds Birchanger for 30 hides (of land). Formerly four caracutes in sovereignty, now three, but four might be made (of it). Formerly 70 capital tenants, now 68. Formerly 100 villeins, now 140. Formerly 50 bordarii, now 90.* Formerly 10 slaves, now 6. Wood or thicket for 1000 swine, 100 acres of meadow, 2 windmills, a fish pond, 2 working horses, 34 beasts, 150 swine, 114 sheep, 24 goats, 10 hives of bees."

To awe the people, and consolidate the power of the Norman Barons, as well as to protect their persons, which in the midst of a desolated and discontented population were only safe. behind thick walls, the county was studded over with castles. Then was the old Saxon stronghold at Colchester repaired and garrisoned by a band of Norman warriors. Hadleigh, another royal castle, which now lies in venerable ruins on the steep hill side overlooking the estuary and the river to Kent, was not erected till some reigns after; nor were Ongar and Pleshy castles; but those of Canfield and Hedingham, the homes of the de Veres; of Clavering and Rayleigh, the lordships of Suene; of Stansted Mountfitchet, under Gernon; and of Walden, under Mandeville, rose in their frowning pride, and were the terror of the surrounding peasantry, who crouched submissively within their shadows. These castles were the rivets of the chain of despotism, which barred the return of the outcast Saxon aristocracy.

* Bordarii, bordars, or bords, were husbandmen on the borders of the manor, who held little houses on condition of supplying provisions for the lord's table.

The introduction of the feudal law changed the tenure of the whole of the land in the county. The soil was granted by the king, who assumed the original ownership thereof, to his principal followers, on certain conditions, generally those of military service. The lord in turn re-granted it in smaller parcels to the occupiers and cultivators, stipulating for a certain amount of labour, or a supply of provisions for his household, or military service-the tenant of what was called a knight's fee being compelled to follow his lord to the field, and maintain himself there at his own expense for forty days. The failure in any of these duties involved the forfeiture of the land. Manor courts grew up as a natural consequence of the feudal system, and though they have now dwindled down to machines for squeezing fines and fees out of copyholders, who are the legal representatives of the farmer-warriors of that day, they were then tribunals of considerable importance. The lord exercised a jurisdiction in civil and criminal cases over his tenants, and in the administration of the law acted like a sovereign prince within his manor. The fair Essex heiress, if she happened to be left during her minority to the general wardship he claimed, was relieved from the trouble of hunting up a husband for herself. She was bound to accept the man her lord selected for her, however twisted his temper or uninviting his countenance; or if, with the perverse spirit of an Essex maiden of modern days, she repulsed the unwelcome suitor, she thereby sacrificed a portion of her worldly goods. By rejecting the match she forfeited "the value of the marriage"-that is, as much as any one would give to the lord for permission to marry her. In time the like custom was extended to the male beir. Thus the lord became the great matchmaker for all orphans upon his estate. Other rights of a monstrous nature are said to have been claimed by the Norman baron relative to the bride on the occasion of the marriage of a vassal and dependent. We may conceive the grinding oppression and immorality to which these powers led in the hands of dissolute tyrants.

The custom of the curfew bell was introduced as part of the stern discipline of the feudal system. The Essex yeoman was not permitted to enjoy as long as it pleased him the warmth of his own fire-side; nor could the Saxon churl, warmed into a rakish feeling by friendly hospitality, linger over the parting cup, unless he groped his way home in the dark, at the hazard of being picked up by a Norman patrol. The curfew sounded an hour after sun-set in every parish, and at its warning the householder was compelled to extinguish his fires and lights, on pain of fine and forfeiture. Sad was the