Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/309

Rh REIGN OF WILLIAM.] ENGLAND 293 country was frittered away. ^Elfred and Eadmund ironside, whether defeated or victorious, fought battle after battle. They were real leaders. After Harold fell in the first battle, there was no real leader left, and the first pitched battle was the last. Next to the fall of Harold and his brothers in the first battle, William s greatest advantage was the submission of London and of the chief men assembled in London. This enabled him to be crowned king at an early stage of the war, when not more than a third of the country was in his actual possession, from that time his government had a show of legality. The resistance of the west and north was, in fact, as truly resist ance to an invading enemy as the fight on Senlac itself. But, when William was once crowned, when there was no other king in the laud, resistance to him took the outward form of rebellion. The gradual nature of the conquest, together with William s position as crowned king at the head of an established government, even enabled him to turn the force of the conquered districts against those which were still unconquered, and to subdue England in some measure by the arms of Englishmen Thus, within five years from his landing, anything like real resistance had come to an end. William was full king throughout the land. The revolt of the earls met with no national sup port, and the tumult in which Bishop Walcher was killed was a mere tumult, caused by local and personal wrongs, such as might have happened in any age. The one general national impulse of a later date than the fall of Chester was, as we have just seen, that which led the English people to support that son of the Conqueror who appealed to them against that son of the Conqueror who was supported by the Xorman nobles. [ But the Xorman conquest of England was something much more than the mere establishment of a Norman king or a Norman dynasty upon the throne of England. William, we must always remember, did not give himself out as a con queror. The name Conqueror, Conqucestor, though applied with perfect truth in the common sense, must strictly be taken in the legal meaning of purchaser or acquirer. William claimed the crown as the lawful successor of Eadward. N T o doubt he would have been well pleased if his title had been peaceably acknowledged. As his claim was not acknowledged or taken notice of in any way, he had, from his own point of view, no course left except to make good his rights by force ; and, in a land where he had no native partisans, the making good of his rights by force meant the conquest of the land by a foreign army. The peculiar character of the Norman Conquest comes from this, that a legal claim to the crown was made good through conquest by a foreign army William s accession was some thing quite different from the mere peaceful succession of a foreign king. It was also something quite different from a mere foreign invasion without any legal pretext at all. We must here, in considering the effects of the Norman Conquest, distinguish between those immediate effects which are rather the form which the Conquest itself took and those lasting effects which the peculiar nature of the Conquest caused it to have upon the whole future history of England. The peculiar nature of William s claim, and the personal character of William himself, had the deepest influence both on the character of the Conquest itself as an event, and on the character of its permanent results. Cirao We may say generally of William that lie was a man 1. who united the highest military skill of his age with a lliam. T i i -11 i i -IT- political skill which would have made him great in any age. He knew how to knit together a number of points, none of which really proved anything, but all of which in one way or another told in his favour, so as to give a plausible look to a claim which had no legal or moral ground whatever. He deceived others ; most likely lie deceived himself. He was in no sort a vulgar oppressor, in no sort a contemptuous despiser of law and right. He never lost sight of a formal justice and of a more than formal piety. He was cruel. in the sense of not scrupling at any severity which would serve his purpose ; he was not cruel, in the sense of taking any pleasure in oppression for its own sake He was guided strictly by the letter of the law, according to hia reading of the law. In his own idea, he was not only guided by justice, but he tempered justice with mercy. It is certain that he often forgave those who revolted against him ; it is also certain that he carefully abstained from blood except in open battle. When he punished, it was always, with the single exception of Waltheof, by some penalty short of death. That the worse part of his character grew at the expense of the better is not wonder ful in such a career. Early in his reign he laid waste Northumberland out of a cruel policy, later in his reign ho laid waste a large tract of Hampshire to form a forest for his own pleasure. In his earlier days Exeter withstood him, Le Mans revolted against him. Both those cities he entered as a peaceful conqueror. In his last days he gave Mantes to the flames, and enjoyed the sight, when he had no wrong to avenge on the part of the people of Mantes, but when he was simply stirred up to wrath by a silly jest of their king. The effect of the peculiar position and character of William was that his settlement was in truth a territorial conquest veiled under legal forms. In William s reading of the law, if he was not himself actually king from the moment of Eadward s death, yet at least he was the one lawful successor to the kingdom. It was therefore treason to fight against him, or to put any hindrance in the way of his taking possession of the crown. The lands and goods of traitors were confiscated to the crown ; therefore the lands and goods of all who had opposed William, Jiving or dead, were confiscated to him. The crown lands and iu William s reading of the law, tbefolUand was crown land of course passed to the new king. The whole folkland then, together with the lands of all who had fallen on Senlac, including the vast estates of Harold and his brothers, all passed to William, and was at his disposal. But, as no Englishman had supported his claims, as many Englishmen had opposed him in arms, the whole nation was involved either in actual or in constructive treason. The whole soil of England then, except the property of ecclesiastical corporations, was forfeited to the new king. But William was not inclined to press his claims to the uttermost ; at his first entry he allowed the mass of the English landowners to redeem the whole or a part of their possessions. Gradually, after each conquest of a district, after each suppression of a revolt, more land came into the king s power That land was dealt with according to his pleasure. It was restored, wholly or in part, to its former owners ; it was granted away, wholly or in part, to new owners, as William thought good in each particular case. But in every case, whether a man kept his own land or received land which had belonged to some one else, all land was held as a grant from the king. The only proof of lawful ownership was either the king s written grant, or else evidence that the owner had been put in possession by the king s order. Of this process of confiscation and regrant, carried out bit by bit during the whole reign of William, Domesday is the record. We see that, in the course of William s twenty-one years, by far the greater part of the land of England had changed hands. We see further, as we might take for granted in such a case, that by far the greater part of the land which was granted to new owners was granted to William s foreign followers. By the end of William s reign all the greatest estates in England had His con- tiscatioua