The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke Volume VII Part 17

The knowledge of this general disposition in the minds of men will naturally remove a great deal of our wonder at seeing an attempt founded on such slender appearances of right, and supported by a power so little proportioned to the undertaking as that of William, so warmly embraced and so generally followed, not only by his own subjects, but by all the neighboring potentates. The Counts of Anjou, Bretagne, Ponthieu, Boulogne, and Poictou, sovereign princes,--adventurers from every quarter of France, the Netherlands, and the remotest parts of Germany, laying aside their jealousies and enmities to one another, as well as to William, ran with an inconceivable ardor into this enterprise, captivated with the splendor of the object, which obliterated all thoughts of the uncertainty of the event. William kept up this fervor by promises of large territories to all his allies and a.s.sociates in the country to be reduced by their united efforts. But after all it became equally necessary to reconcile to his enterprise the three great powers of whom we have just spoken, whose disposition must have had the most influence on his affairs.

His feudal lord, the King of France, was bound by his most obvious interests to oppose the further aggrandizement of one already too potent for a va.s.sal. But the King of France was then a minor; and Baldwin, Earl of Flanders, whose daughter William had married, was regent of the kingdom. This circ.u.mstance rendered the remonstrance of the French Council against his design of no effect: indeed, the opposition of the Council itself was faint; the idea of having a king under va.s.salage to their crown might have dazzled the more superficial courtiers; whilst those who thought more deeply were unwilling to discourage an enterprise which they believed would probably end in the ruin of the undertaker.

The Emperor was in his minority, as well as the King of France; but by what arts the Duke prevailed upon the Imperial Council to declare in his favor, whether or no by an idea of creating a balance to the power of France, if we can imagine that any such idea then subsisted, is altogether uncertain; but it is certain that he obtained leave for the va.s.sals of the Empire to engage in his service, and that he made use of this permission. The Popes consent was obtained with still less difficulty. William had shown himself in many instances a friend to the Church and a favorer of the clergy. On this occasion he promised to improve those happy beginnings in proportion to the means he should acquire by the favor of the Holy See. It is said that he even proposed to hold his new kingdom as a fief from Rome. The Pope, therefore, entered heartily into his interests; he excommunicated all those that should oppose his enterprise, and sent him, as a means of insuring success, a consecrated banner.

CHAPTER II.

REIGN OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1065.]

After the Battle of Hastings, the taking of Dover, the surrender of London, and the submission of the princ.i.p.al n.o.bility, William had nothing left but to order in the best manner the kingdom he had so happily acquired. Soon after his coronation, fearing the sudden and ungoverned motions of so great a city, new to subjection, he left London until a strong citadel could be raised to overawe the people. This was built where the Tower of London now stands. Not content with this, he built three other strong castles in situations as advantageously chosen, at Norwich, at Winchester, and at Hereford, securing not only the heart of affairs, but binding down the extreme parts of the kingdom. And as he observed from his own experience the want of fortresses in England, he resolved fully to supply that defect, and guard the kingdom both against internal and foreign enemies. But he fortified his throne yet more strongly by the policy of good government. To London he confirmed by charter the liberties it had enjoyed under the Saxon kings, and endeavored to fix the affections of the English in general by governing them with equity according to their ancient laws, and by treating them on all occasions with the most engaging deportment. He set up no pretences which arose from absolute conquest. He confirmed their estates to all those who had not appeared in arms against him, and seemed not to aim at subjecting the English to the Normans, but to unite the two nations under the wings of a common parental care. If the Normans received estates and held lucrative offices and were raised by wealthy matches in England, some of the English were enriched with lands and dignities and taken into considerable families in Normandy. But the king's princ.i.p.al regards were showed to those by whose bravery he had attained his greatness. To some he bestowed the forfeited estates, which were many and great, of Harold's adherents; others he satisfied from the treasures his rival had ama.s.sed; and the rest, quartered upon wealthy monasteries, relied patiently on the promises of one whose performances had hitherto gone hand in hand with his power. There was another circ.u.mstance which conduced much to the maintaining, as well as to the making, his conquest. The posterity of the Danes, who had finally reduced England under Canute the Great, were still very numerous in that kingdom, and in general not well liked by nor well affected to the old Anglo-Saxon inhabitants. William wisely took advantage of this enmity between the two sorts of inhabitants, and the alliance of blood which was between them and his subjects. In the body of laws which he published he insists strongly on this kindred, and declares that the Normans and Danes ought to be as sworn brothers against all men: a policy which probably united these people to him, or at least so confirmed the ancient jealousy which subsisted between them and the original English as to hinder any cordial union against his interests.

When the king had thus settled his acquisitions by all the methods of force and policy, he thought it expedient to visit his patrimonial territory, which, with regard to its internal state, and the jealousies which his additional greatness revived in many of the bordering princes, was critically situated. He appointed to the regency in his absence his brother Odo, an ecclesiastic, whom he had made Bishop of Bayeux, in France, and Earl of Kent, with great power and preeminence, in England,--a man bold, fierce, ambitious, full of craft, imperious, and without faith, but well versed in all affairs, vigilant, and courageous.

To him he joined William Fitz-Osbern, his justiciary, a person of consummate prudence and great integrity. But not depending on this disposition, to secure his conquest, as well as to display its importance abroad, under a pretence of honor, he carried with him all the chiefs of the English n.o.bility, the popular Earls Edwin and Morcar, and, what was of most importance, Edgar Atheling, the last branch of the royal stock of the Anglo-Saxon kings, and infinitely dear to all the people.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1607.]

The king managed his affairs abroad with great address, and covered, all his negotiations for the security of his Norman dominions under the magnificence of continual feasting and unremitted diversion, which, without an appearance of design, displayed his wealth and power, and by that means facilitated his measures. But whilst he was thus employed, his absence from England gave an opportunity to several humors to break out, which the late change had bred, but which the amazement likewise produced by that violent change, and the presence of their conqueror, wise, vigilant, and severe, had hitherto repressed. The ancient line of their kings displaced, the only thread on which it hung carried out of the kingdom and ready to be cut off by the jealousy of a merciless usurper, their liberties none by being precarious, and the daily insolencies and rapine of the Normans intolerable,--these discontents were increased by the tyranny and rapaciousness of the regent, and they were fomented from abroad by Eustace, Count of Boulogne. But the people, though ready to rise in all parts, were dest.i.tute of leaders, and the insurrections actually made were not carried on in concert, nor directed to any determinate object; so that the king, returning speedily, and exerting himself everywhere with great vigor, in a short time dissipated these ill-formed projects. However, so general a dislike to William's government had appeared on this occasion, that he became in his turn disgusted with his subjects, and began to change his maxims of rule to a rigor which was more conformable to his advanced age and the sternness of his natural temper. He resolved, since he could not gain the affections of his subjects, to find such matter for their hatred as might weaken them, and fortify his own authority against the enterprises which that hatred might occasion. He revived the tribute of Danegelt, so odious from its original cause and that of its revival, which he caused to be strictly levied throughout the kingdom. He erected castles at Nottingham, at Warwick, and at York, and filled them with Norman garrisons. He entered into a stricter inquisition for the discovery of the estates forfeited on his coming in; paying no regard to the privileges of the ecclesiastics, he seized upon the treasures which, as in an inviolable asylum, the unfortunate adherents to Harold had deposited in monasteries. At the same time he entered into a resolution of deposing all the English, bishops, on none of whom he could rely, and filling their places with Normans. But he mitigated the rigor of these proceedings by the wise choice he made in filling the places of those whom he had deposed, and gave by that means these violent changes the air rather of reformation than oppression. He began with Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury. A synod was called, in which, for the first time in England, the Pope's legate _a latere_ is said to have presided.

In this council, Stigand, for simony and for other crimes, of which it is easy to convict those who are out of favor, was solemnly degraded from his dignity. The king filled his place with Lanfranc, an Italian.

By his whole conduct he appeared resolved to reduce his subjects of all orders to the most perfect obedience.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1068.]

The people, loaded with new taxes, the n.o.bility, degraded and threatened, the clergy, deprived of their immunities and influence, joined in one voice of discontent, and stimulated each other to the most desperate resolutions. The king was not unapprised of these motions, nor negligent of them. It is thought he meditated to free himself from much of his uneasiness by seizing those men on whom the nation in its distresses used to cast its eyes for relief. But whilst he digested these measures, Edgar Atheling, Edwin and Morcar, Waltheof, the son of Siward, and several others, eluded his vigilance, and escaped into Scot land, where they were received with open arms by King Malcolm. The Scottish monarch on this occasion married the sister of Edgar; and this match engaged him more closely to the accomplishment of what his grat.i.tude to the Saxon kings and the rules of good policy had before inclined him. He entered at last into the cause of his brother-in-law and the distressed English. He persuaded the King of Denmark to enter into the same measures, who agreed to invade England with a fleet of a thousand ships. Drone, an Irish king, declared in their favor, and supplied the sons of Earl G.o.dwin with vessels and men, with which they held the English coast in continual alarms.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1069.]

Whilst the forces of this powerful confederacy were collecting on all sides, and prepared to enter England, equal dangers threatened from within the kingdom. Edric the Forester, a very brave and popular Saxon, took up arms in the counties of Hereford and Salop, the country of the ancient Silures, and inhabited by the same warlike and untamable race of men. The Welsh strengthened him with their forces, and Cheshire joined in the revolt. Hereward le Wake, one of the most brave and indefatigable soldiers of his time, rushed with a numerous band of fugitives and outlaws from the fens of Lincoln and the Isle of Ely, from whence, protected by the situation of the place, he had for some time carried on an irregular war against the Normans. The sons of G.o.dwin landed with a strong body in the West; the fire of rebellion ran through the kingdom; Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, at once threw off the yoke. Daily skirmishes were fought in every part of the kingdom, with various success and with great bloodshed. The Normans retreated to their castles, which the English had rarely skill or patience to master; out of these they sallied from time to time, and a.s.serted their dominion. The conquered English for a moment resumed their spirit; the forests and mora.s.ses, with which this island then, abounded, served them for fortifications, and their hatred to the Normans stood in the place of discipline; each man, exasperated by his own wrongs, avenged them in his own manner.

Everything was full of blood and violence: murders, burnings, rapine, and confusion overspread the whole kingdom. During these distractions, several of the Normans quitted the country, and gave up their possessions, which they thought not worth holding in continual horror and danger.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1070.]

In the midst of this scene of disorder, the king alone was present to himself and to his affairs. He first collected all the forces on whom he could depend within the kingdom, and called powerful succors from Normandy. Then he sent a strong body to repress the commotions in the West; but he reserved the greatest force and his own presence against the greatest danger, which menaced from the North. The Scots had penetrated as far as Durham; they had taken the castle, and put the garrison to the sword. A like fate attended York from the Danes, who had entered the Humber with a formidable fleet. They put this city into the hands of the English malcontents, and thereby influenced all the northern counties in their favor. William, when he first perceived the gathering of the storm, endeavored, and with some success, to break the force of the princ.i.p.al blow by a correspondence at the court of Denmark; and now he entirely blunted the weapon by corrupting, with a considerable sum, the Danish general. It was agreed, to gratify that piratical nation, that they should plunder some part of the coast, and depart without further disturbance. By this negotiation the king was enabled to march with an undissipated force against the Scots and the princ.i.p.al body of the English. Everything yielded. The Scots retired into their own country. Some of the most obnoxious of the English fled along with them. One desperate party, under the brave Waltheof, threw themselves into York, and ventured alone to resist his victorious army.

William pressed the siege with vigor, and, notwithstanding the prudent dispositions of Waltheof, and the prodigies of valor he displayed in its defence, standing alone in the breach, and maintaining his ground gallantly and successfully, the place was at last reduced by famine. The king left his enemies no time to recover this disaster; he followed his blow, and drove all who adhered to Edgar Atheling out of all the countries northward of the Humber. This tract he resolved entirely to depopulate, influenced by revenge, and by distrust of the inhabitants, and partly with a view of opposing an hideous desert of sixty miles in extent as an impregnable barrier against all attempts of the Scots in favor of his disaffected subjects. The execution of this barbarous project was attended with all the havoc and desolation that it seemed to threaten. One hundred thousand are said to have perished by cold, penury, and disease. The ground lay untilled throughout that whole s.p.a.ce for upwards of nine years. Many of the inhabitants both of this and all other parts of England fled into Scotland; but they were so received by King Malcolm as to forget that they had lost their country. This wise monarch gladly seized so fair an opportunity, by the exertion of a benevolent policy, to people his dominions, and to improve his native subjects. He received the English n.o.bility according to their rank, he promoted them to offices according to their merit, and enriched them by considerable estates from his own demesne. From these n.o.ble refugees several considerable families in Scotland are descended.

William, on the other hand, amidst all the excesses which the insolence of victory and the cruel precautions of usurped authority could make him commit, gave many striking examples of moderation and greatness of mind.

He pardoned Waltheof, whose bravery he did not the less admire because it was exerted against himself. He restored him to his ancient honors and estates; and thinking his family strengthened by the acquisition of a gallant man, he bestowed upon him his niece Judith in marriage. On Edric the Forester, who lay under his sword, in the same generous manner he not only bestowed his life, but honored it with an addition of dignity.

The king, having thus, by the most politic and the most courageous measures, by art, by force, by severity, and by clemency, dispelled those clouds which had gathered from every quarter to overwhelm him, returned triumphant to Winchester, where, as if he had newly acquired the kingdom, he was crowned with great solemnity. After this he proceeded to execute the plan he had long proposed of modelling the state according to his own pleasure, and of fixing his authority upon an immovable foundation.

There were few of the English who in the late disturbances had not either been active against the Normans or shown great disinclination to them. Upon some right, or some pretence, the greatest part of their lands were adjudged to be forfeited. William gave these lands to Normans, to be held by the tenure of knight-service, according to the law which modified that service in all parts of Europe. These people he chose because he judged they must be faithful to the interest on which they depended; and this tenure he chose because it raised an army without expense, called it forth at the least warning, and seemed to secure the fidelity of the va.s.sal by the multiplied ties of those services which were inseparably annexed to it. In the establishment of these tenures, William only copied the practice which was now become very general. One fault, however, he seems to have committed in this distribution: the immediate va.s.sals of the crown were too few; the tenants _in capite_ at the end of this reign did not exceed seven hundred; the eyes of the subject met too many great objects in the state besides the state itself; and the dependence of the inferior people was weakened by the interposal of another authority between them and the crown, and this without being at all serviceable to liberty. The ill consequence of this was not so obvious whilst the dread of the English made a good correspondence between the sovereign and the great va.s.sals absolutely necessary; but it afterwards appeared, and in a light very offensive to the power of our kings.

As there is nothing of more consequence in a state than the ecclesiastical establishment, there was nothing to which this vigilant prince gave more of his attention. If he owed his own power to the influence of the clergy, it convinced him how necessary it was to prevent that engine from being employed in its turn against himself. He observed, that, besides the influence they derived from their character, they had a vast portion of that power which always attends property. Of about sixty thousand knights' fees, which England was then judged to contain, twenty-eight thousand were in the hands of the clergy; and these they held discharged of all taxes, and free from every burden of civil or military service: a const.i.tution undoubtedly no less prejudicial to the authority of the state than detrimental to the strength of the nation, deprived of so much revenue, so many soldiers, and of numberless exertions of art and industry, which were stifled by holding a third of the soil in dead hands out of all possibility of circulation. William in a good measure remedied these evils, but with the great offence of all the ecclesiastic orders. At the same time that he subjected the Church lands to military service, he obliged each monastery and bishopric to the support of soldiers, in proportion to the number of knights' fees that they possessed. No less jealous was he of the Papal pretensions, which, having favored so long as they served him as the instruments of his ambition, he afterwards kept within very narrow bounds. He suffered no communication with Rome but by his knowledge and approbation. He had a bold and ambitious Pope to deal with, who yet never proceeded to extremities with nor gained one advantage over William during his whole reign,--although he had by an express law reserved to himself a sort of right in approving the Pope chosen, by forbidding his subjects to yield obedience to any whose right the king had not acknowledged.

To form a just idea of the power and greatness of this king, it will be convenient to take a view of his revenue. And I the rather choose to dwell a little upon this article, as nothing extends to so many objects as the public finances, and consequently nothing puts in a clearer or more decisive light the manners of the people, and the form, as well as the powers, of government at any period.

The first part of this consisted of the demesne. The lands of the crown were, even before the Conquest, very extensive. The forfeitures consequent to that great change had considerably increased them. It appears from the record of Domesday, that the king retained in his own hands no fewer than fourteen hundred manors. This alone was a royal revenue. However, great as it really was, it has been exaggerated beyond all reason. Ordericus Vitalis, a writer almost contemporary, a.s.serts that this branch alone produced a thousand pounds a day,[72]--which, valuing the pound, as it was then estimated, at a real pound of silver, and then allowing for the difference in value since that time, will make near twelve millions of our money. This account, coming from such an authority, has been copied without examination by all the succeeding historians. If we were to admit the truth of it, we must entirely change our ideas concerning the quant.i.ty of money which then circulated in Europe. And it is a matter altogether monstrous and incredible in an age when there was little traffic in this nation, and the traffic of all nations circulated but little real coin, when the tenants paid the greatest part of their rents in kind, and when it may be greatly doubted whether there was so much current money in the nation as is said to have come into the king's coffers from this one branch, of his revenue only. For it amounts to a twelfth part of all the circulating species which a trade infinitely more extensive has derived from sources infinitely more exuberant, to this wealthy nation, in this improved age.

Neither must we think that the whole revenue of this prince ever rose to such a sum. The great fountain which fed his treasury must have been Danegelt, which, upon any reasonable calculation, could not possibly exceed 120,000_l._ of our money, if it ever reached that sum. William was observed to be a great h.o.a.rder, and very avaricious; his army was maintained without any expense to him, his demesne supported his household; neither his necessary nor his voluntary expenses were considerable. Yet the effects of many years' sc.r.a.ping and h.o.a.rding left at his death but 60,000_l._,--not the sixth part of one year's income, according to this account, of one branch of his revenue; and this was then esteemed a vast treasure. Edgar Atheling, on being reconciled to the king, was allowed a mark a day for his expenses, and he was thought to be allowed sufficiently, though he received it in some sort as an equivalent for his right to the crown. I venture on this digression, because writers in an ignorant age, making guesses at random, impose on more enlightened times, and affect by their mistakes many of our reasonings on affairs of consequence; and it is the error of all ignorant people to rate unknown times, distances, and sums very far beyond their real extent. There is even something childish and whimsical in computing this revenue, as the original author has done, at so much a day. For my part, I do not imagine it so difficult to come at a pretty accurate decision of the truth or falsehood of this story.

The above-mentioned manors are charged with rents from five to an hundred pounds each. The greatest number of those I have seen in print are under fifty; so that we may safely take that number as a just medium; and then the whole amount of the demesne rents will be 70,000_l._, or 210,000_l._ of our money. This, though almost a fourth less than the sum stated by Vitalis, still seems a great deal too high, if we should suppose the whole sum, as that author does, to be paid in money, and that money to be reckoned by real pounds of silver. But we must observe, that, when sums of money are set down in old laws and records, the interpretation of those words, pounds and shillings, is for the most part oxen, sheep, corn, and provision. When real coin money was to be paid, it was called white money, or _argentum alb.u.m_, and was only in a certain stipulated proportion to what was rendered in kind, and that proportion generally very low. This method of paying rent, though it entirely overturns the prodigious idea of that monarch's pecuniary wealth, was far from being less conducive to his greatness. It enabled him to feed a mult.i.tude of people,--one of the surest and largest sources of influence, and which always outbuys money in the traffic of affections. This revenue, which was the chief support of the dignity of our Saxon kings, was considerably increased by the revival of Danegelt, of the imposition of which we have already spoken, and which is supposed to have produced an annual income of 40,000_l._ of money, as then valued.

The nest branch of the king's revenue were the feudal duties, by him first introduced into England,--namely, ward, marriage, relief, and aids. By the first, the heir of every tenant who held immediately from the crown, during his minority, was in ward for his body and his land to the king; so that he had the formation of his mind at that early and ductile age to mould to his own purposes, and the entire profits of his estate either to augment his demesne or to gratify his dependants: and as we have already seen how many and how vast estates, or rather, princely possessions, were then held immediately of the crown, we may comprehend how important an article this must have been.

Though the heir had attained his age before the death of his ancestor, yet the king intruded between him and his inheritance, and obliged him to redeem, or, as the term then was, to relieve it. The quant.i.ty of this relief was generally pretty much at the king's discretion, and often amounted to a very great sum.

But the king's demands on his rents in chief were not yet satisfied. He had a right and interest in the marriage of heirs, both males and females, virgins and widows,--and either bestowed them at pleasure on his favorites, or sold them to the best bidder. The king received for the sale of one heiress the sum of 20,000_l._, or 60,000_l._ of our present money,--and this at a period when the chief estates were much reduced. And from hence was derived a great source of revenue, if this right were sold,--of influence and attachment, if bestowed.

Under the same head of feudal duties were the casual aids to knight his eldest son and marry his eldest daughter. These duties could be paid but once, and, though not considerable, eased him in these articles of expenses.

After the feudal duties, rather in the order than in point of value, was the profit which arose from the sale of justice. No man could then sue in the king's court by a common or public right, or without paying largely for it,--sometimes the third, and sometimes even half, the value of the estate or debt sued for. These presents were called oblations; and the records preceding Magna Charta, and for some time after, are full of them. And, as the king thought fit, this must have added greatly to his power or wealth, or indeed to both.

The fines and amercements were another branch, and this, at a time when disorders abounded, and almost every disorder was punished by a fine, was a much greater article than at first could readily be imagined,--- especially when we consider that there were no limitations in this point but the king's mercy, particularly in all offences relating to the forest, which were of various kinds, and very strictly inquired into.

The sale of offices was not less considerable. It appears that all offices at that time were, or might be, legally and publicly sold,--that the king had many and very rich employments in his gift, and, though it may appear strange, not inferior to, if they did not exceed, in number and consequence, those of our present establishment. At one time the great seal was sold for three thousand marks. The office of sheriff was then very lucrative: this charge was almost always sold. Sometimes a county paid a sum to the king, that he might appoint a sheriff whom they liked; sometimes they paid as largely to prevent him from appointing a person disagreeable to them; and thus the king had often from the same office a double profit in refusing one candidate and approving the other. If some offices were advantageous, others were burdensome; and the king had the right, or was at least in the unquestioned practice, of forcing his subjects to accept these employments, or to pay for there immunity; by which means he could either punish his enemies or augment his wealth, as his avarice or his resentments prevailed.

The greatest part of the cities and trading towns were under his particular jurisdiction, and indeed in a state not far removed from slavery. On these he laid a sort of imposition, at such a time and in such a proportion as he thought fit. This was called a _tallage_. If the towns did not forthwith pay the sum at which they were rated, it was not unusual, for their punishment, to double the exaction, and to proceed in levying it by nearly the same methods and in the same manner now used to raise a contribution in an enemy's country.

But the Jews were a fund almost inexhaustible. They were slaves to the king in the strictest sense; insomuch that, besides the various tallages and fines extorted from them, none succeeded to the inheritance of his father without the king's license and an heavy composition. He sometimes even made over a wealthy Jew as a provision to some of his favorites for life. They were almost the only persons who exercised usury, and thus drew to themselves the odium and wealth of the whole kingdom; but they were only a ca.n.a.l, through which it pa.s.sed to the royal treasury. And nothing could be more pleasing and popular than such exactions: the people rejoiced, when they saw the Jews plundered,--not considering that they were a sort of agents for the crown, who, in proportion to the heavy taxes they paid, were obliged to advance the terms and enforce with greater severity the execution of their usurious contracts. Through them almost the whole body of the n.o.bility were in 'debt to the king; and when he thought proper to confiscate the effects of the Jews, the securities pa.s.sed into his hands; and by this means he must have possessed one of the strongest and most terrible instruments of authority that could possibly be devised, and the best calculated to keep the people in an abject and slavish dependence.

The last general head of his revenue were the customs, prisages, and other impositions upon trade. Though the revenue arising from traffic in this rude period was much limited by the then smallness of its object, this was compensated by the weight and variety of the exactions levied by an occasional exertion of arbitrary power, or the more uniform system of hereditary tyranny. Trade was restrained, or the privilege granted, on the payment of tolls, pa.s.sages, paages, pontages, and innumerable other vexatious imposts, of which, only the barbarous and almost unintelligible names subsist at this day.

These were the most constant and regular branches of the revenue. But there were other ways innumerable by which money, or an equivalent in cattle, poultry, horses, hawks, and dogs, accrued to the exchequer. The king's interposition in marriages, even where there was no pretence from tenure, was frequently bought, as well as in other negotiations of less moment, for composing of quarrels, and the like; and, indeed, some appear on the records, of so strange and even ludicrous a nature, that it would not be excusable to mention them, if they did not help to show from how many minute sources this revenue was fed, and how the king's power descended to the most inconsiderable actions of private life.[73]

It is not easy to penetrate into the true meaning of all these particulars, but they equally suffice to show the character of government in those times. A prince furnished with so many means of distressing enemies and gratifying friends, and possessed of so ample a revenue entirely independent of the affections of his subjects, must have been very absolute in substance and effect, whatever might have been the external forms of government.

For the regulation of all these revenues, and for determining all questions which concerned them, a court was appointed, upon the model of a court of the same nature, said to be of ancient use in Normandy, and called the Exchequer.

There was nothing in the government of William conceived in a greater manner, or more to be commended, than the general survey he took of his conquest. An inquisition was made throughout the kingdom concerning the quant.i.ty of land which was contained in each county,--the name of the deprived and the present proprietor,--the stock of slaves, and cattle of every kind, which it contained. All these were registered in a book, each article beginning with the king's property, and proceeding downward, according to the rank of the proprietors, in an excellent order, by which might be known at one glance the true state of the royal revenues, the wealth, consequence, and natural connections of every person in the kingdom,--in order to ascertain the taxes that might be imposed, and, to serve purposes in the state as well as in civil causes, to be general and uncontrollable evidence of property. This book is called Domesday or the Judgment Book, and still remains a grand monument of the wisdom of the Conqueror,--a work in all respects useful and worthy of a better age.

The Conqueror knew very well how much discontent must have arisen from the great revolutions which his conquest produced in all men's property, and in the general tenor of the government. He, therefore, as much as possible to guard against every sudden attempt, forbade any light or fire to continue in any house after a certain bell, called curfew, had sounded. This bell rung at about eight in the evening. There was policy in this; and it served to prevent the numberless disorders which arose from the late civil commotions.

For the same purpose of strengthening his authority, he introduced the Norman law, not only in its substance, but in all its forms, and ordered that all proceedings should be had according to that law in the French language.[74] The change wrought by the former part of this regulation could not have been very grievous; and it was partly the necessary consequence of the establishment of the new tenures, and which wanted a new law to regulate them: in other respects the Norman inst.i.tutions were not very different from the English. But to force, against nature, a new language upon a conquered people, to make them, strangers in those courts of justice in which they were still to retain a considerable share, to be reminded, every time they had recourse to government for protection, of the slavery in which it held them,--this is one of those acts of superfluous tyranny from which very few conquering nations or parties have forborne, though no way necessary, but often prejudicial to their safety.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1071.]

These severities, and affronts more galling than severities, drove the English to another desperate attempt, which was the last convulsive effort of their expiring freedom. Several n.o.bles, prelates, and others, whose estates had been confiscated, or who were in daily apprehension of their confiscation, fled into the fens of Lincoln and Ely, where Hereward still maintained his ground. This unadvised step completed the ruin of the little English interest that remained. William hastened to fill up the sees of the bishops and the estates of the n.o.bles with his Norman favorites. He pressed the fugitives with equal vivacity; and at once to cut off all the advantage they derived from their situation, he penetrated into the Isle of Ely by a wooden bridge two miles in length; and by the greatness of the design, and rapidity of the execution, as much as by the vigor of his charge, compelled them to surrender at discretion. Hereward alone escaped, who disdained to surrender, and had cut his way through his enemies, carrying his virtue and his sword, as his pa.s.sports, wheresoever fortune should conduct him. He escaped happily into Scotland, where, as usual, the king was making some slow movements for the relief of the English. William lost no time to oppose him, and had pa.s.sed with infinite difficulty through a desert of his own making to the frontiers of Scotland. Here he found the enemy strongly intrenched. The causes of the war being in a good measure spent by William's late successes, and neither of the princes choosing to risk a battle in a country where the consequences of a defeat must be so dreadful, they agreed to an accommodation, which included a pardon for Edgar Atheling on a renunciation of his t.i.tle to the crown. William on this occasion showed, as he did on all occasions, an honorable and disinterested sense of merit, by receiving Hereward to his friendship, and distinguishing him by particular favors and bounties. Malcolm, by his whole conduct, never seemed intent upon coming to extremities with William: he was satisfied with keeping this great warrior in some awe, without bringing things to a decision, that might involve his kingdom in the same calamitous fate that had oppressed England; whilst his wisdom enabled him to reap advantages from the fortunes of the conquered, in drawing so many useful people into his dominions, and from the policy of the Conqueror, in imitating those feudal regulations which he saw his neighbor force upon the English, and which appeared so well calculated for the defence of the kingdom. He compa.s.sed this the more easily, because the feudal policy, being the discipline of all the considerable states in Europe, appeared the masterpiece of government.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1073.]

If men who have engaged in vast designs could ever promise themselves repose, William, after so many victories, and so many political regulations to secure the fruit of them, might now flatter himself with some hope of quiet. But disturbances were preparing for his old age from a new quarter, from whence they were less expected and less tolerable,--from the Normans, his companions in victory, and from his family, which he found not less difficulty in governing than his kingdom. Nothing but his absence from England was wanting to make the flame blaze out. The numberless petty pretensions which the petty lords his neighbors on the continent had on each other and on William, together with their restless disposition and the intrigues of the French court, kept alive a constant dissension, which made the king's presence on the continent frequently necessary. The Duke of Anjou had at this time actually invaded his dominions. He was obliged to pa.s.s over into Normandy with an army of fifty thousand men. William, who had conquered England by the a.s.sistance of the princes on the continent, now turned against them the arms of the English, who served him with bravery and fidelity; and by their means he soon silenced all opposition, and concluded the terms of an advantageous peace. In the mean time his Norman subjects in England, inconstant, warlike, independent, fierce by nature, fiercer by their conquest, could scarcely brook that subordination in which their safety consisted. Upon some frivolous pretences, chiefly personal disgusts,[75] a most dangerous conspiracy was formed: the princ.i.p.al men among the Normans were engaged in it; and foreign correspondence was not wanting. Though this conspiracy was chiefly formed and carried on by the Normans, they knew so well the use which William on this occasion would not fail to make of his English subjects, that they endeavored, as far as was consistent with secrecy, to engage several of that nation, and above all, the Earl Waltheof, as the first in rank and reputation among his countrymen. Waltheof, thinking it base to engage in any cause but that of his country against his benefactor, unveils the whole design to Lanfranc, who immediately took measures for securing the chief conspirators. He dispatched messengers to inform the king of his danger, who returned without delay at the head of his forces, and by his presence, and his usual bold activity, dispersed at once the vapors of this conspiracy. The heads were punished. The rest, left under the shade of a dubious mercy, were awed into obedience. His glory was, however, sullied by his putting to death Waltheof, who had discovered the conspiracy; but he thought the desire the rebels had shown of engaging him in their designs demonstrated sufficiently that Waltheof still retained a dangerous power. For as the years, so the suspicions, of this politic prince increased,--at whose time of life generosity begins to appear no more than a splendid weakness.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1079]

These troubles were hardly appeased, when others began to break forth in his own family, which neither his glory, nor the terror which held a great nation in chains, could preserve in obedience to him. To remove in some measure the jealousy of the court of France with regard to his invasion of England, he had promised upon his acquisition of that kingdom to invest his eldest son, Robert, with the Duchy of Normandy.

But as his new acquisition did not seem so secure as it was great and magnificent, he was far from any thoughts of resigning his hereditary dominions, which he justly considered as a great instrument in maintaining his conquests, and a necessary retreat, if he should be deprived of them by the fortune of war. So long as the state of his affairs in England appeared unsettled, Robert acquiesced in the reasonableness of this conduct; but when he saw his father established on his throne, and found himself growing old in an inglorious subjection, he began first to murmur at the injustice of the king, soon after to cabal with the Norman barons and at the court of France, and at last openly rose in rebellion, and compelled the va.s.sals of the Duchy to do him homage. The king was not inclined to give up to force what he had refused to reason. Unbroken with age, unwearied with so many expeditions, he pa.s.sed again into Normandy, and pressed his son with the vigor of a young warrior.