Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/321

Rh THE NORMAN REIGNS.] ENGLAND 303 laws iry I. it is found that the exclusion extended to natives of England of both races, that the preference was a preference for absolute foreigners as such. The horrors of the anarchy in Stephen s day fell on both races alike ; the foreign mer cenaries who laid waste the land were hateful to both alike. We may safely say that, at the time of the accession of Henry of Anjou, the man of Norman descent born in England had, altogether in feeling and largely in speech, become an Englishman. None of these three reigns was a time of great legislative changes, but the reigns of Rufus and Henry were the time in which the new system of administration grew up. Un der Rufus the doctrine of military tenures, and of the incidents consequent on such tenures, was put into systematic shape by his rapacious minister Randolf Flambard, whom he raised to tb.3 bishopric of Durham. This man is distinctly charged with having first subjected ecclesiastical property to these burthens, and there can be little doubt that it was he who laid them on lay property also. The evidence is this. Under the Conqueror we see the germs and beginnings of certain usages, but nothing more. At the accession of Henry they appear in a system atic shape as established usages, usages which Henry does nut promise to abolish, though he does promise to reform the abuses of them. The feudal burthens were a logical deduction from the doctrine of military tenure. The land is held of the lord on condition of certain services being rendered. It passes from father to son ; but in order that each successive tenant may strictly hold it as a grant from the lord, tie heir must receive it again. For the new grant he must pay a relief, the price of the relevatio, the taking up again, of the estate which has lapsed to the lord. But it may be that the heir is from age or sex incompetent to discharge the services due to the lord. In the case of the minor heir, the lord takes the fief into his own hands till the heir is of age to discharge them. The heiress can never discharge them in person, she must discharge them through a husband. But the interests of the lord require that she shall marry only with his approval, lest she should carry the fief into the hands of an enemy All these occa sions were turned by the perverse ingenuity of Randolf Flambard into means for increasing the royal revenue. Ths wardship, that is, the temporary possession of the minor s estate, might be granted or sold. So might the marriage, of the heiress. The lord might either sell her and her estate for money, or else he. might take money from the heiress herself for leave to marry according to her own inclinations. So with bishoprics and abbeys; Flambard found out that they too were held of the king by military service. During the vacancy of the benefice, there was no one to discharge the service; the king therefore took temporary possession of the ecclesiastical estate. And, as the new prelate could not be chosen without the royal consent, the king might prolong that temporary possession as long as be chose. All thcsa inferences were logically drawn out and sternly carried into practice by the minister of Rufus. The utmost that Henry pledged himself to do was to reform the grosser oppressions of his brother s reign, and to limit his exactions within some reasonable bounds. The claims themselves went on, to the oppression and sorrow of successive genera tions of heirs and heiresses, till, as regards lay tenures, the whole system was swept away by the famous Act of Charles II. There is nothing to make us think that the innovations of Flambard were ever put forth in a legislative shape. At all events, no laws of William Rufus are extant. A book is extant which calls itself the Laws of Henry ; but, like the codes called the law of Eadward and William, it is rather a private compilation or law-book. It has a certain value, as a witness to the state of the law in Henry I. s time; but it must not be mistaken for a collection of real statutes put forth by that king. It is remarkable for the strongly English character of the jurisprudence described. There can be little doubt that the compiler purposely gave his work as English a charac ter as he could; but there is as little doubt that Henry strove to give to his government, as far as he could, at least the appearance of an English character. In his charter he grants to his people the law of King Eadward that i^, the system of government which prevailed in Eadward s reign with his father s amendments. And, both in the charter and in other documents of his reign, the time of King Eadward is constantly taken as the standard. Henry however kept the forests in his own hands, and preserved the stern forest law of his father. The reign of Henry is also memorable as the time of the earliest extant charters, both of the king and of other lords, granting new privileges to boroughs, often calling them into legal existence for the first time. Thus the citizens of London are exempted from various burthens of different kinds, and from the jurisdiction of any but their own courts. They have further the farm of all Middlesex their subject dis trict and the appointment of their own sheriff. In the next reign or rather anarchy, the citizens of London appear dis tinctly as a communio or commune. But if this period was not marked by many formal changes in the law, the new administrative system grew stronger and stronger. If the reign of Rufus systematized the military tenures, the reign of Henry systematized the exchequer and the great offices of state. A family of able ministers begins with Roger, chancellor, justiciar, and bishop of Salisbury, a family of the secularized churchmen of that day, most of whom ross from the king s service to high ecclesiastical office. Henry, a strict administrator of justice, looked no less narrowly after his own interests. Under him we get the earliest pipe-roll of the exchequer, and a wonderful document it is, showing how many and how strange were the sources of income which flowed into the hoard of a Norman king. These leigns are also of the highest moment in ecclesiasti cal history. We now see what the ecclesiastical effects of the Conquest really were. As we have seen, the tendency of the time was to make bishoprics the reward of temporal services, a practice which under Rufus easily sank into direct simony. Yet Rufus himself, in a fit of sickness and repentance, put a saint at the head of the English Church. After a vacancy of four years (1089-1093) Aneelm succeeded La n franc in the see of Canterbury. Anselm was forced into the office, but at this stage he showed no objection whatever to the ancient English mode of investiture, by which the prelate received his staff from the king, and becamo his man. But, in such a reign as that of Rufus, the tendencies of such a man as Anselm could not fail to be Rome wards. Rome might well seem to be the seat of law, as opposed to the nnlaw of the reigning king. The quarrel began about the acknowledgment of a pope of dis puted title, it went on about various matters, till Anselm crossed the sea to confer with Pope Urban. He remained in banishment till the death of Rufus, and learned at Bari and at Rome that the laws of England were evil, that no churchman ought to receive investiture from a lay lord or do homage to a lay lord for the lands of his church. He was recalled by Henry, and served him loyally during Robert s invasion. But he refused to do homage or to consecrate the bishops whom the king had invested. A second absence from England (1103-1 10G) followed, till a compromise was made between the king and Pope Paschal. The king gave up the claim to invest with the staff; but the prelate was to do homage to the king for his lands. Auselm then came back, Charters to towns. Adminis tration &amp;gt;f Henry. , Contra- versie? of Rufus and Henry with Anselm.