ing, probably, a just example of the man-lence. Morcar, a weak and fluctuating ner in which these tremendous powers over man, was allured from his sanctuary and the vanquished were lavished on hungry imprisoned for life. Hereward made a last adventurers, whose hands were imbrued in and manful stand for the Saxon name, in blood, and who came reeking from the per- which he was helped by the abbots of Pepetration of atrocities not to be named, to terborough, Ely, Thorney, and Croyland. continue a slow and lasting tyranny under They were aided by the co-operation of a the names of earls, constables, and senes- Danish squadron, which quitted its station chals.* so soon as to give occasion to a new charge

In this manner the settlement of the against that nation. William besieged, or country became as cruel as its conquest. rather blockaded, the camp, but was obliged The annalists who speak of the persecu- to open a passage over the marshes, by contion of all who were guilty of being wealthy structing a wooden causeway of three. might be suspected of exaggeration, if the miles in length. The Saxons set fire to it, experience of all ages did not show that destroying many of the assailants. They such horrors, even in less barbarous times, defended themselves in their natural inattend all measures of sudden and sweep- trenchments till the monks of Ely, impaing rapine. The contests between those tient of the privations of a blockade, made who are corrupted by its practice and those their peace with William, and admitted his who are incensed by its infliction, are the soldiers into their monastery, which formed most dreadful evils which tear asunder hu- part of Hereward's line of defence. It is man society. Some of the Saxons left a consolatory to find that these monks were land which was no longer their country. A punished for their cowardice and treachery band of them, under Siward earl of Glou- by the severe exactions of the Normans. cester, found their way to Constantinople; Hereward, whom the Norman poets honorwere employed against another party of ed with the name of the "hardy outlaw," their mortal enemies the Normans, under kept his ground like another Alfred, when Robert Guiscard; and maintained their all around were subdued. Unshaken valor reputation for valor and fidelity to the was a virtue which the conqueror knew latest times of the Constantinopolitan mon- how to admire; and, while he imposed conarchy. Besides the multitudes who were tributions on the despicable monks, he rescattered over the forests throughout the stored the last of the Saxons to his posseskingdom, or who were compelled to submit sions. to the Norman invaders, a more formidable The subjection of England would have assemblage of Saxons was formed in the been incomplete without that of the church: great district of fens spread over parts of a council was held at Winchester, at which the counties of Lincoln, Norfolk, Cam- the Saxon archbishop of Canterbury was bridge, Huntingdon, and Bedford, where deposed on specious pretexts, and Lanfranc the rich abbeys of Thorney and Croyland raised to that see; a man otherwise worthy had formerly been established, that they of honors, but a creature of William, and might be less accessible to invaders. Here- a slave of Rome. Various expedients were ward, one of the most resolute and unsha- adopted by this assembly to deprive the ken of the Saxon chiefs,† fortified a camp Saxon prelates, in order that the clergy in the isle of Ely immediately after the might be devoted to the new government, close of the northern war in 1070. Edwin, and that the revenues of the church, as either in attempting to escape into Scot- well, as the lands of the laity, might be land, or in collecting a force to deliver his converted into a fund for rewarding Norbrother, was killed, according to some, by man adventurers. the Normans; according to others, by his William now ventured on a second visit own followers. His head was presented to to Normandy, where he was engaged with the conqueror. Morcar, together with petty usurpations on his neighbors. Edgar Stigand archbishop of Canterbury, Ellgwin Atheling, whose efforts were always too bishop of Durham, and the most conspicu- late and too faint, tried, at this desperate ous of the remaining Saxons, repaired to period of Saxon fortune, to procure aid Hereward's camp in the land of marshes, from the king of France and the earl of the last asylum of Anglo-Saxon independ- Flanders. Disappointed in his hopes, he passed many inglorious years at the court

quence and research, whose citations have generally

*Thierry, Hist. de la Conquête de l'Angleterre, of Rouen. At a subsequent period he folii. 122. ed. 2.-A writer equally admirable for elo-lowed a crusade to the Holy Land; and appeared to me very faithful. The spirit of system one of our latest accounts of this last prehas, in the succeeding parts of his history, led him tender to a descent from Oding is, that he into exaggeration. was alive in the time of William of Malms

"Herewardus strenuissimus."-Brompton. "Caput ejus domino suo deferebant."-Orderic Vitalis.

§ One of the "Dis Geniti."

bury, exhibiting the unseemly sight of the of Edgar; if the Danes had been more representative of Alfred fed on the crumbs faithful, and the Scots more powerful; if it that fell from the table of a Norman ty- had been even possible to keep up a co-oprant. Though the English nation owed eration between the armies of the north their ruin in some degree to his pusillan- and those of the west, it is not improbable imity, yet they looked on him with fond- that the northern chiefs might have sucness as a relic of their departed greatness; ceeded in their defence. In spite of all and their affection for him was daily their misfortunes, the Saxons gave full time strengthened by their hatred of the Nor- for other states to interpose, if any of them man rule. had taken alarm at the battle of Hastings.

The subjugation of England has been But the people of Europe were then incarelated more fully than the scheme of this pable of conceiving and feeling their comnarrative will generally allow, both on ac- mon interest in preventing unjust aggrancount of the magnitude of the revolution, dizement. No chief could see any object and because the true nature of the con- beyond the strife and scuffles in which he quest has been hidden from us by the rela- was constantly engaged. Communication tion of modern historians. It was a slow, was tedious and unsafe; concert became not a sudden conquest. The territory won almost physically impossible, even if the at the battle of Hastings was not a fourth princes of that age had been justified by part of the kingdom. It was bounded on experience in trusting each other to that the north and west by a line which we can- limited extent in which mutual confidence not confidently fill up, but which extended is necessary to hold together a gang of banfrom Dorset to the bay which enters be- ditti. The king of France saw the protween Norfolk and Lincoln. The succes-gress of his overgrown vassal with indifsive contests in which the Conqueror was ference. The earl of Flanders was a pasengaged ought not to be regarded as on his sive spectator of the aggrandizement of his part measures to quell rebellion. They rival and neighbor. More distant sovereigns were a series of wars, levied by a foreign heard of the conquest of England by a powprince against unconquered and unbending erful lord of the continent with less regard, portions of the Saxon people. Their re- as affecting themselves, than modern Eusistance was not a flame casually lighted ropeans would now feel at a new Tartarian up by the oppression of rulers: it was the invasion of China. defensive warfare of a nation who took up The remaining events in the reign of arms to preserve, not to recover, their in- William were not of a size to require redependence. There are few examples of a cital. A great booty usually sows dissenpeople who have suffered more for national sion among the plunderers. Where there dignity and legitimate freedom. can be no principle of justice recognized The Britons are, perhaps, too far from us by all, every man measures his share only to admit our fellow-feeling with them. by his appetite. The Norman barons, disWhen we stretch out our hands towards contented with their allotment of the spoil, their heroes, we scarcely embrace more rebelled against William. They were jointhan a shadow. But let us not distort his- ed by some Saxon chiefs; and both parties tory by throwing the unmerited reproach blended their contradictory grievances in of want of national spirit on the Anglo- their invectives against him. He suppressSaxon, and thus placing an impassable bar-ed their conspiracy, and put to death Walrier between our sympathy and the found- theof, the last of the earls, on whom he had ers of our laws and liberties, whose lan- formerly bestowed his niece Judith in marguage we speak, in whose homes we dwell, riage-a lady who is said, at last, to have and in whose establishments and institu- used her influence with the Conqueror to tions we justly glory.

rid herself of a husband no longer acceptable to her. He seems only not to have disclosed the conspiracy: but his wealth was his crime.

The wars of William for the conquest of the west, the north, and the east, were protracted for seven years after the battle of Hastings. Had the character of Edgar In 1076 he went to Normandy to supbeen more elevated, had he been even set press the revolt of his eldest son, Robert up as a royal pageant at the moment of Curthose, to whom he had promised, when Harold's coronation, we may doubt whether he was on the eve of sailing for England, the invasion would have been attempted. that he would resign the duchy if he beIf Harold had delayed the battle till the came quiet possessor of the English crown. arrival of his reinforcements, it seems to be When the English nation were subdued, probable, from the obstinate defence at Hast- Robert demanded Normandy and Maine: ings, that the result might have been dif- William answered that he should not unferent. If the claims of Harold's family dress until he was going to bed. Such recould have been reconciled with the rights volts excited little horror, in an age when

the title to sovereign power was unsettled; | irrevocable crimes deserve mention only when monarchs were accustomed to divide because they proclaim to the oppressor and their dominions among their children; and the oppressed, that there are moments when, during their own lives, they often when conscience will resume her authoriappointed their sons to be viceroys of re- ty, striking horror into the heart of the mote provinces, with almost regal powers. most fearless tyrant. These grants might occasionally be neces- It cannot be doubted, that William sursary to enable the favored son to take pos- passed all his contemporary rulers in a casession of his destined inheritance. The pacity for command, in war certainly, and reign of a conqueror, by weakening the probably also in peace. Sagacity, circumcurb of principle, gave a loose to the im- spection, foresight, courage, both in forming patient ambition of an heir apparent. The plans and facing dangers, insight into charhostilities between the father and son, be-acter, ascendant over men's minds; all these ing fomented by the king of France, lasted qualities he doubtless possessed in a very for several years, and were closed by an in-high degree. All that can be said in excident more interesting than any political tenuation of his perfidy and cruelty is, that event. Robert, besieged in the castle of he did not so far exceed chiefs of that age Gerberoi, in one of his sallies wounded and in these detestable qualities as he unquesunhorsed an aged knight, whose counte- tionably surpassed them in ability and vigor. nance was concealed by his helmet, and It may be added, that if he had lived in a was about to pursue his advantage when he better age, when his competitors, as well recognized the voice of his father in his fall as himself, would have been subject to equal to the ground. He dismounted, knelt, and restraints, he would have retained his suwith a flood of tears, embracing his father, periority over them by force of his mental implored pardon. Some writers represent powers and endowments. It is also true William, also, as overcome by natural feel- that contests with lawless and barbarous ing; but, according to the more credible enemies, to which a man is stimulated by testimony, the old king, smarting with his fierce and burning ambition, are the most wound, hardened by ambition, inflamed by severe tests of human conduct. The root anger, was inexorable, pronounced a curse of the evil is the liability of the mind to on his repentant son, and was only per- that intractable and irresistible frenzy. suaded by the importunities of his wife and The Saxon chronicler, who tells us that his nobility to consent to an apparent recon- he had lived in William's court, gives him ciliation when it became necessary to paci- the praise of being wise; which is just, if fy his dominions. wisdom can exist without virtue; of energy, While engaged in his usual desolating stateliness, splendor, mildness and generoswarfare he came before the town of Man-ity towards the clergy, who were his intes, in July, 1087, and commanded it to be struments of rule, and of the severe execuburnt. The houses were consumed, and tion of justice upon all robbers except those some religious perished in the flames of of his own band. But "so stern was he their monasteries. The king, eager to tri- and hot,"* that no man durst gainsay his umph amidst the ruins, galloped into the will:-"He had earls in prison; bishops he smoking ashes, where the horse, treading hurled from their bishoprics. He overran on some burning embers, plunged so violent- Scotland; and he would in two years more ly as severely to wound the unwieldy rider have won Ireland. In his time had men in parts which were before afflicted by a much distress. He took money by 'right painful malady. He was carried to Rouen, and unright.' He made many deer-parks, but he withdrew from the noise of the cap- and he established laws by which whosoital to the adjoining abbey of St. Gervas, ever slew a hart or a hind was deprived of where, on Thursday, 9th September, he his eyesight. He forbade men to kill harts breathed his last, after commanding that a or boars, and he loved the tall deer as if he sum of money should be given to the cler- were their father. He decreed that the gy of Mantes; that the like compensation hares should go free. Rich men bemoaned should be made to other towns which had it, and poor men shuddered at it. But he suffered from his violence; and that the was so stern that he recked not the hatred English prisoners, Morcar, Siward, and Ul- of them all." The Saxon, even amidst the noth, the brother of Harold, should be set ruins of his country, considered the sacrifice at large. He consented with great difficul- of the lives of the many to the amusement ty to the release of his brother Odo, whom of the few, as a species of tyranny more he declared to be without faith or humani- insolent and intolerable than any other. ty: thus pronouncing the greatest condem- Two legal revolutions, of very unequal nation on his own government, of which importance and magnitude, occurred or the man so described had been the first minister. These inadequate atonements for passionate as much as a politic tyranny.

* The chronicler here imputes to the Conqueror a

were completed in the reign of the Con-be, that it was gradually prepared in the queror: the separation of the ecclesiastical Anglo-Saxon times, and finished by the from the civil judicature, and the introduc- Norman invaders.

tion, or consummation, of the feudal sys- At first it should seem that the chiefs of tem. Justice was chiefly administered the Germanic tribes, out of the immense among the Anglo-Saxons in the county or mass of property of the vanquished, which rather hundred courts, of which the bishop became the regal or the public demesne, and alderman, or earl, were joint judges, granted considerable portions to their favorand where the thanes were bound to do ites, to their most distinguished soldiers, suit and service, probably to countenance and to their most trusty advisers, perhaps the judgment and strengthen the authority without mention of a definite term, but of the court. The most commendable part with the usual expectation of gratitude and of William's policy was his conduct to the fidelity, of which a flagrant breach was pope, towards whom he acted with grati- sure to be followed by a seizure of the land tude, but with independence. He enforced of the unthankful and inconstant vassal, the ecclesiastical laws against simony and long before it became liable to forfeiture the concubinage of the clergy. He re- for withholding service in war by the austored, as we have seen, the donation of thority of written or unwritten law. Lands Peter's pence; but he rejected with some so intrusted were ordinarily held for life, indignation the demand of homage made and became hereditary about the time of by Hildebrand (Gregory VII.), then elated Charlemagne, by the gradual operation of with the impunity and acquiescence which the disposition of mankind to continue the seemed to attend his pretensions to domi- possessions of a father to his children. neer over sovereigns. He seems to have The same general cause rendered the introduced the frequent practice of appeals governments of provinces descendible unto Rome in ecclesiastical causes, without der counts and dukes.

which, indeed, the patriarchal jurisdiction The great proprietors imitated the policy of the Roman see was useless. But he of the crown in engaging followers by separated the ecclesiastical jurisdiction grants of land, which went through the from the civil, by forbidding bishops to hold like progress. In all these cases the grantpleas in county or hundred courts, and lim- or of the land was interested, disposed, and ited their power to causes of a spiritual na- at length obliged by law, to protect the ture in their own tribunals. The language grantee, as much as the grantee was bound of this writing, and probably its immediate to render service to the grantor. The foreffect, were favorable to clerical independ-mer was called the lord; the latter the ence. Its ultimate tendency, however, was tenant relatively to the land, and the vassal to set free the civil judge from the ascend- relatively to the lord. All the grantees ency of the more learned ecclesiastic, and having derived their property from the to place the inferiority of a spiritual court king, he became the most extensive lord. in a more conspicuous light, by rendering As every grantee might grant to another, it dependent for coercive authority in every many links in the feudal chain might interinstance on an appeal to the secular arm. vene between the king, as lord paramount, It seems to be probable, that without such and the actual occupant of the soil, as a change the bishop must have at last whol- tenant paravail. The allodial or independly governed the earl, and the spiritual pow- ent landholders, exposed to the attacks of er would have been deemed as much enti- potent lords, and unprotected by superiors tled to a coercive authority as the civil or followers, gradually surrendered their power must needs be. perilous independence into the hands of It is certain that the system of govern- those who were powerful enough to secure ment and landed property, commonly them. They became voluntary vassals. known throughout Europe as the feudal Thus the feudal system became in the system, subsisted in England from the reign course of five centuries nearly universal, of the Conqueror. It is now as clearly es- and may be said to have reached its zenith tablished, that this system did not arise on about the time of the Conqueror's invasion. the first conquest of the Western empire. The greater part of the allodial land had It is improbable that so peculiar a system in the eleventh century become_feudal. should have been suddenly and completely The Normans, as well as the other French, introduced into a country. Yet there were had adopted this system. There are traces many circumstances attendant on the Nor- of it, and advances towards it, discoverable man invasion which soften the unlikelihood even of such an introduction. The most reasonable supposition, therefore, seems to

*A. D. 1085. Spelm. Con. i. 368, &c. Rymer, i. 3.

†Thus the Burgundians took about one half; the Visigoths in Spain two thirds; and the various conquerors of Italy probably one third of the land of the conquered. It is singular that, both in France and England, the share is very doubtful.

among the Saxons. Military service they portion of the people were reduced to perperformed. They swore fealty, though not sonal slavery. Had the feudal system never homage; and their heriot is not discovera- existed before, the circumstances of Wilbly different from the feudal relief, or mo- liam's conquest would have been sufficient ney payable on succession. The confisca- to produce it. It was, however, more easy tion of an immense part of the land of to transfer it from France to a country England for real fidelity and pretended where its foundations were already laid by treason, and the policy of placing the ad- the Saxons.

ministration and the property in the hands We have endeavored to sketch a brief of William's foreign followers, gave him and imperfect outline of very singular inan opportunity of establishing a feudal sys-stitutions, which probably produced more tem, together with means of supporting misery in their first vigor, stirred up more it, and motives for immediately introducing energy in their course, and left behind them it, which scarcely existed in any of the more good when the waters were dried up, continental nations among whom it had than any other system of laws by which slowly grown into practice. the race of man has been governed. The

As authority was won and exercised by moral and political influence by which the war, the military principle of the feudal feudal system gave a peculiar character to system was attended by civil administra-society and government in Europe must tion and territorial jurisdiction. The lord, often present themselves for contemplation who had the right to the military service in the sequel.

WILLIAM II.

1087-1100.

of the people of a district, was the only person who had the means of exercising any authority in it. The vassal swore fidelity to his lord, who thereupon invested every successive tenant with his land. WILLIAM surnamed the Red, which the Every lord had courts, at which his tenants monks translated Rufus, the Conqueror's were obliged to serve him in distributing second son, flew from Rouen before the fujustice to all his vassals. The king was neral of his father; and, by William's desthe chief lord; but his jurisdiction was tination, as well as by the influence of Lanlimited to his immediate tenants and to his franc, was proclaimed and crowned king of own domains. Every new inheritor paid a England, at Westminster, on the 26th of sum of money, under the name of a relief, September, 1087. By the advice of the to his lord on the investiture. Every tenant primate, he distributed his father's hoards paid a fine for leave to alienate the fief. It in the manner thought most likely to repair was forfeited for breach of the feudal con- some of the effects of his crimes. Robert, tract; and it escheated, that is, fell, to the who was then absent in Germany, on relord when the descendants of the first ceiving tidings from Rouen, hastened back grantee were either extinct, or had, by to that city, where he was joyfully receivtheir offences, become incapable of inherited, and peaceably proclaimed as duke of ing. It was a natural provision, though it Normandy. Inflamed by the complaints grew to be an intolerable grievance in Eng- of Anglo-Norman visitants, and by the inland and in Normandy, where it chiefly pre-stigation of his uncle, the restless Odo, he vailed, that the lord should be the guardian encouraged a revolt of the new English of his minor tenants, and that he should nobility against Rufus, which became very have the disposal of his wards, female as general. This mutinous spirit required as well as male, in marriage. The right of firm a hand as that of their old master to the most petty lord to lead his vassals restrain it. They were not quite reconciled against their neighbors was not questioned. to considering their native country as a Private wars raged constantly. All the separate and foreign land. They naturally military tenants were, directly or indirect-apprehended war between the brothers, an ly, bound by an oath of fealty to the crown; event very inconvenient to a body who but the obligation was frequently eluded, were the greatest landholders in both counand revolts were familiar. The king, though tries. Mowbray earl of Northumberland, the lord paramount, was often by no means Bigod earl of Norfolk, Montgomerie earl the most powerful lord; and William him- of Shrewsbury, with several military preself governed more men and a wider ter- lates, revolted in their various counties. ritory than the Capetian prince who reign- Odo strengthened himself in the castle of ed at Paris. A feudal kingdom was a con- Rochester, and commanded the important federacy of a numerous body of lords, who county of Kent, where duke Robert was lived in a state of war against each other, to land. William was under such alarm and of rapine towards all mankind, in which that he called for the aid of the English. the king, according to his ability and vigor, "The Englishmen went to the assistance was either a cipher or a tyrant, and a great of the king their lord. The Englishmen H