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 often rebelled against him and his descendants in England. But his gifts of land were nearly always scattered in such a way that one great man might have land perhaps in ten different counties, but not too much in any one place. Besides, every landowner, big or little, had to swear a strong oath to be faithful to the King. All gifts of land were to come only from the King, all courts of justice should depend upon the King alone. It remained for William's great-grandson Henry II to put all this down in black and white, in ink, on parchment; Henry knew, what even William had not learned, that the pen is a much more terrible and lasting recorder than the sword.

In a word, William would be King not only of Wessex but of every rood of English land and of all men dwelling thereon. And so the country began once more to enjoy a peace it had never known since the Roman legions left. The sons of the very men who had fought William at Hastings flew to fight for William against some rebel Norman earl, and earls and other men found that if they wanted to play the game of rebellion they had better go back to France. And the actual number of Normans who remained in England and took root was really very small, though among them we should find nearly all the nobles, bishops, great abbots and other leaders of the people. Very few Norman women came, 80 these men married English wives, and, within 150 years, all difference between Normans and Englishmen had vanished. The Norman Conquest of 1066 was the beginning of the history of the English race as one people and of England as a great power in Europe. You might say, indeed—