Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/84

64 promise on bended knee to be "his man for ever," sealed by a warm grip of the hand—was the rent he paid for the ground. In the great Domesday Book, compiled by the Conqueror, every field and farm in England are faithfully recorded, every mill and fish-pond, every wood and bit of forest land, every pig and cow are entered—and taxed. And so the famous day was ushered in when, on the hot plains of Salisbury, William the Conqueror gathered together the whole body of English land-owners, 60,000 men in all—Saxon, Dane and Norman—great and small from every part of the island. There each man knelt and swore to be the King's man, faithful to him above all others. Men have seen in this great Assembly the foreshadowing of our Lords and Commons in the Parliament of to-day. Be this as it may, it was without doubt the foreshadowing of that great national unity after which England had so long struggled in vain. At this Council (1086), England became for ever a kingdom one and indivisible, "which since that day no man has dreamed of parting asunder"—