Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/212

 200 THE LATER MIDDLE AGES But William created no great fiefs. Instead, he created a number of small earldoms, none of them sufficiently large to The Norman De a source pf danger j and the land was further Kings, 1066- divided up among an immense number of small barons or tenants-in-chief, who held it directly from the Crown, and owed allegiance to no overlord, except the king. Also, he maintained to the full the overlord's right of controlling the marriages of vassals, so that he prevented great estates from being accumulated by marriages in the hands of single families. Hence William and his two sons were always able to crush any attempts at defiance on the part of nobles. The Normans individually exercised for long a cruel oppression over the English ; but, even if they attempted to combine against the Crown, the Crown could call the English to its aid against them. But after the Conqueror's two sons, their incompetent nephew Stephen of Blois, the son of William's daughter Adela, got himself elected king. Then came a frightful period of anarchy. His claim to the Crown was challenged by Matilda or Maud, the daughter of the last king Henry i. Every man fought with his neighbour, and there was no government at all, till the whole country was thirsting for a restoration of order. The contest for the Crown was settled by an agreement that Matilda's son Henry should succeed on the death of Stephen, _, _, when he ascended the throne as Henry n., the first The Planta- genets: of the Plantagenets. We have already observed Henry II., how the history of France was affected during the next hundred years by its relations with its Angevin vassals, who were also kings of England. In France Henry was the most dangerous of the vassals of the king; in England it was his business to make the Crown supreme, and to reorganise the government which had gone so hopelessly to pieces under Stephen. He made it his object not only to secure to the Crown such a supremacy as it had enjoyed under the Conqueror's sons ; he also established the system under which law was enforced and justice generally prevailed. He also made a great effort to make the Church subject to the ordinary law of the realm, but he was finally defeated in the contest with Becket, who was zealously supported by Pope Alexander in.