But the circumstances of his reign gave increased strength to certain tendencies which had been long afloat.And out of them, in the next reign, the malignant genius of Randolf Flambard devised a systematic code of oppression.Yet even in his work there is little of formal change.There are no laws of William Rufus.The so called feudal incidents, the claims of marriage, wardship, and the like, on the part of the lord, the ancient HERIOT developed into the later RELIEF, all these things were in the germ under William, as they had been in the germ long before him.In the hands of Randolf Flambard they stiffen into established custom; their legal acknowledgement comes from the charter of Henry the First which promises to reform their abuses.Thus the Conqueror clearly claimed the right to interfere with the marriages of his nobles, at any rate to forbid a marriage to which he objected on grounds of policy.
Under Randolf Flambard this became a regular claim, which of course was made a means of extorting money.Under Henry the claim is regulated and modified, but by being regulated and modified, it is legally established.
The ordinary administration of the kingdom went on under William, greatly modified by the circumstances of his reign, but hardly at all changed in outward form.Like the kings that were before him, he "wore his crown" at the three great feasts, at Easter at Winchester, at Pentecost at Westminster, at Christmas at Gloucester.
Like the kings that were before him, he gathered together the great men of the realm, and when need was, the small men also.Nothing seems to have been changed in the constitution or the powers of the assembly; but its spirit must have been utterly changed.The innermost circle, earls, bishops, great officers of state and household, gradually changed from a body of Englishmen with a few strangers among them into a body of strangers among whom two or three Englishmen still kept their places.The result of their "deep speech" with William was not likely to be other than an assent to William's will.The ordinary freeman did not lose his abstract right to come and shout "Yea, yea," to any addition that King William made to the law of King Edward.But there would be nothing to tempt him to come, unless King William thought fit to bid him.
But once at least William did gather together, if not every freeman, at least all freeholders of the smallest account.On one point the Conqueror had fully made up his mind; on one point he was to be a benefactor to his kingdom through all succeeding ages.The realm of England was to be one and indivisible.No ruler or subject in the kingdom of England should again dream that that kingdom could be split asunder.When he offered Harold the underkingship of the realm or of some part of it, he did so doubtless only in the full conviction that the offer would be refused.No such offer should be heard of again.There should be no such division as had been between Cnut and Edmund, between Harthacnut and the first Harold, such as Edwin and Morkere had dreamed of in later times.Nor should the kingdom be split asunder in that subtler way which William of all men best understood, the way in which the Frankish kingdoms, East and West, had split asunder.He would have no dukes or earls who might become kings in all but name, each in his own duchy or earldom.No man in his realm should be to him as he was to his overlord at Paris.No man in his realm should plead duty towards an immediate lord as an excuse for breach of duty towards the lord of that immediate lord.Hence William's policy with regard to earldoms.There was to be nothing like the great governments which had been held by Godwine, Leofric, and Siward; an Earl of the West-Saxons or the Northumbrians was too like a Duke of the Normans to be endured by one who was Duke of the Normans himself.The earl, even of the king's appointment, still represented the separate being of the district over which he was set.He was the king's representative rather than merely his officer; if he was a magistrate and not a prince, he often sat in the seat of former princes, and might easily grow into a prince.And at last, at the very end of his reign, as the finishing of his work, he took the final step that made England for ever one.In 1086 every land-owner in England swore to be faithful to King William within and without England and to defend him against his enemies.The subject's duty to the King was to any duty which the vassal might owe to any inferior lord.When the King was the embodiment of national unity and orderly government, this was the greatest of all steps in the direction of both.Never did William or any other man act more distinctly as an English statesman, never did any one act tell more directly towards the later making of England, than this memorable act of the Conqueror.Here indeed is an addition which William made to the law of Edward for the truest good of the English folk.And yet no enactment has ever been more thoroughly misunderstood.
Lawyer after lawyer has set down in his book that, at the assembly of Salisbury in 1086, William introduced "the feudal system." If the words "feudal system" have any meaning, the object of the law now made was to hinder any "feudal system" from coming into England.
