Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/52

 *



Rufus also came the beginnings of the later effects of the Conquest. The reign of William the Red, the administration of Randolf Flambard, was, above all others, the time when the feudal side, so to speak, of the Conquest put on a systematic shape. The King and his minister put into regular working, if they did not write down in a regular code, those usages which under the Conqueror were still merely tendencies irregularly at work, but which, at the accession of Henry the First, had already grown into abuses which needed redress. But, on the other hand, it was equally the time when the anti-feudal tendencies of the Conquest, the causes and the effects of the great law of Salisbury, showed how firmly they had taken root. The reign of Rufus laid down the two principles, that, in the kingdom of England, no man should be stronger than the king, but that the king should hold his strength only by making himself the head of the state and of the people. As a stage then in the history of the Conquest and its results, as a stage in the general constitutional history of England, the thirteen years of the reign of Rufus form a period of the highest interest and importance.

But those years are a time of no less interest and importance, if we look at them with regard to the general position of England in the world. Within our own island, the reign of William the Red was marked by a great practical extension of the power of England on the Welsh marches. On another side it was marked yet more distinctly by an enlargement of the kingdom itself, by the settlement of the north-western frontier, by the winning for England of a new land, and by the restoration of a fallen city as the bulwark of the new boundary. What the daughter of Ælfred was at Chester, the son of the Conqueror was at Carlisle. Beyond the