Part 2 — Chapter III. (These four articles abrogated by the four articles following them, 118-122.) Article 118. The Federal Constitution may at any time be amended. (continued 16)

E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest of England, chapter 2, with foot-note.

"Now that peace was restored, and the Danes driven out of his domains, it remained to be seen whether Alfred was as good a ruler as he was a soldier. … What did he see? The towns, even London itself, pillaged, ruined, or burnt down; the monasteries destroyed; the people wild and lawless; ignorance, roughness, insecurity everywhere. It is almost incredible with what a brave heart he set himself to repair all this; how his great and noble aims were still before him; how hard he strove, and how much he achieved. First of all he seems to have sought for helpers. Like most clever men, he was good at reading characters. He soon saw who would be true, brave, wise friends, and he collected these around him. Some of them he fetched from over the sea, from France and Germany; our friend Asser from Wales, or, as he calls his country, 'Western Britain,' while England, he calls 'Saxony.' He says he first saw Alfred 'in a royal vill, which is called Dene' in Sussex. 'He received me with kindness, and asked me eagerly to devote myself to his service, and become his friend; to leave everything which I possessed on the left or western bank of the Severn, and promised that he would give more than an equivalent for it in his own dominions. I replied that I could not rashly and incautiously promise such things; for it seemed to be unjust that I should leave those sacred places in which I had been bred, educated, crowned, and ordained for the sake of any earthly honour and power, unless upon compulsion. Upon this he said, "If you cannot accede to this, at least let me have your service in part; spend six months of the year with me here, and the other six months in Britain."' And to this after a time Asser consented. What were the principal things he turned his mind to after providing for the defence of his kingdom, and collecting his friends and counsellors about him? Law—justice—religion—education. He collected and studied the old laws of his nation; what he thought good he kept, what he disapproved he left out. He added others, especially the ten commandments and some other parts of the law of Moses. Then he laid them all before his Witan, or wise men, and with their approval published them. … The state of justice in England was dreadful at this time. … Alfred's way of curing this was by inquiring into all cases, as far as he possibly could, himself; and Asser says he did this 'especially for the sake of the poor, to whose interest, day and night, he ever was wonderfully attentive; for in the whole kingdom the poor, besides him, had few or no protectors.' … When he found that the judges had made mistakes through ignorance, he rebuked them, and told them they must either grow wiser or give up their posts; and soon the old earls and other judges, who had been unlearned from their cradles, began to study diligently. … For reviving and spreading religion among his people he used the best means that he knew of; that is, he founded new monasteries and restored old ones, and did his utmost to get good bishops and clergymen. For his own part, he strove to practise in all ways what he taught to others. … Education was in a still worse condition than everything else. … All the schools had been broken up. Alfred says that when he began to reign there were very few clergymen south of the Humber who could even understand the Prayer-book. (That was still in Latin, as the Roman missionaries had brought it.) And south of the Thames he could not remember one. His first care was to get better-educated clergy and bishops. And next to get the laymen taught also. … He founded monasteries and schools, and restored the old ones which had been ruined. He had a school in his court for his own children and the children of his nobles. But at the very outset a most serious difficulty confronted Alfred. Where was he to get books? At this time, as far as we can judge, there can only have been one, or at most two books in the English language—the long poem of Cædmon about the creation of the world, &c., and the poem of Beowulf about warriors and fiery dragons. There were many English ballads and songs, but whether these were written down I do not know. There was no book of history, not even English history; no book of geography, no religious books, no philosophy. Bede, who had written so many books, had written them all in Latin. … So when they had a time of 'stillness' the king and his learned friends set to work and translated books into English; and Alfred, who was as modest and candid as he was wise, put into the preface of one of his translations that he hoped, if anyone knew Latin better than he did, that he would not blame him, for he could but do according to his ability. … Beside all this, he had a great many other occupations. Asser, who often lived with him for months at a time, gives us an account of his busy life. Notwithstanding his infirmities and other hindrances, 'he continued to carry on the government, and to exercise hunting in all its branches; to teach his workers in gold and artificers of all kinds, his falconers, hawkers, and dog-keepers; to build houses, majestic and good, beyond all the precedents of his ancestors, by his new mechanical inventions; to recite the Saxon books (Asser, being a Welshman, always calls the English, Saxon), and especially to learn by heart the Saxon poems, and to make others learn them; he never desisted from studying most diligently to the best of his ability; he attended the mass and other daily services of religion; he was frequent in psalm-singing and prayer; … he bestowed alms and largesses on both natives and foreigners of all countries; he was affable and pleasant to all, and curiously eager to investigate things unknown.'"

M. J. Guest, Lectures on the History of England, lecture 9.

"It is no easy task for anyone who has been studying his [Alfred's] life and works to set reasonable bounds to their reverence, and enthusiasm, for the man. Lest the reader should think my estimate tainted with the proverbial weakness of biographers for their heroes; let them turn to the words in which the earliest, and the last of the English historians of that time, sum up the character of Alfred. {787} Florence of Worcester, writing in the century after his death, speaks of him as 'that famous, warlike, victorious king; the zealous protector of widows, scholars, orphans and the poor; skilled in the Saxon poets; affable and liberal to all; endowed with prudence, fortitude, justice, and temperance; most patient under the infirmity which he daily suffered; a most stern inquisitor in executing justice; vigilant and devoted in the service of God.' Mr. Freeman, in his 'History of the Norman Conquest,' has laid down the portrait in bold and lasting colours, in a passage as truthful as it is eloquent, which those who are familiar with it will be glad to meet again, while those who do not know it will be grateful to me for substituting for any poor words of my own. 'Alfred, the unwilling author of these great changes, is the most perfect character in history. He is a singular instance of a prince who has become a hero of romance, who, as such, has had countless imaginary exploits attributed to him, but to whose character romance has done no more than justice, and who appears in exactly the same light in history and in fable. No other man on record has ever so thoroughly united all the virtues both of the ruler and of the private man. In no other man on record were so many virtues disfigured by so little alloy. A saint without superstition, a scholar without ostentation, a warrior all whose wars were fought in the defence of his country, a conqueror whose laurels were never stained by cruelty, a prince never cast down by adversity, never lifted up to insolence in the day of triumph—there is no other name in history to compare with his. Saint Lewis comes nearest to him in the union of a more than monastic piety with the highest civil, military, and domestic virtues. Both of them stand forth in honourable contrast to the abject superstition of some other royal saints, who were so selfishly engaged in the care of their own souls that they refused either to raise up heirs for their throne, or to strike a blow on behalf of their people. But even in Saint Lewis we see a disposition to forsake an immediate sphere of duty for the sake of distant and unprofitable, however pious and glorious, undertakings. The true duties of the King of the French clearly lay in France, and not in Egypt or Tunis. No such charge lies at the door of the great King of the West Saxons. With an inquiring spirit which took in the whole world, for purposes alike of scientific inquiry and of Christian benevolence, Alfred never forgot that his first duty was to his own people. He forestalled our own age in sending expeditions to explore the Northern Ocean, and in sending alms to the distant Churches of India; but he neither forsook his crown, like some of his predecessors, nor neglected his duties, like some of his successors. The virtue of Alfred, like the virtue of Washington, consisted in no marvellous displays of super-human genius, but in the simple, straightforward discharge of the duty of the moment. But Washington, soldier, statesman, and patriot, like Alfred, has no claim to Alfred's further characters of saint and scholar. William the Silent, too, has nothing to set against Alfred's literary merits; and in his career, glorious as it is, there is an element of intrigue and chicanery utterly alien to the noble simplicity of both Alfred and Washington. The same union of zeal for religion and learning with the highest gifts of the warrior and the statesman is found, on a wider field of action, in Charles the Great. But even Charles cannot aspire to the pure glory of Alfred. Amidst all the splendour of conquest and legislation, we cannot be blind to an alloy of personal ambition, of personal vice, to occasional unjust aggressions and occasional acts of cruelty. Among our own later princes, the great Edward alone can bear for a moment the comparison with his glorious ancestor. And, when tried by such a standard, even the great Edward fails. Even in him we do not see the same wonderful union of gifts and virtues which so seldom meet together; we cannot acquit Edward of occasional acts of violence, of occasional recklessness as to means; we cannot attribute to him the pure, simple, almost childlike disinterestedness which marks the character of Alfred.' Let Wordsworth, on behalf of the poets of England, complete the picture:

'Behold a pupil of the monkish gown, The pious Alfred, king to justice dear! Lord of the harp and liberating spear; Mirror of princes! Indigent renown Might range the starry ether for a crown Equal to his deserts, who, like the year, Pours forth his bounty, like the day doth cheer, And awes like night, with mercy-tempered frown. Ease from this noble miser of his time No moment steals; pain narrows not his cares— Though small his kingdom as a spark or gem, Of Alfred boasts remote Jerusalem, And Christian India, through her widespread clime, In sacred converse gifts with Alfred shares.'"

Thomas Hughes, Alfred the Great, chapter 24.

ALSO IN: R. Pauli, Life of Alfred the Great.

Asser, Life of Alfred.

See, also, NORMANS, and EDUCATION, MEDIÆVAL.

ENGLAND: A. D. 901. Accession of the West Saxon king Edward, called The Elder.

ENGLAND: A. D. 925. Accession of the West Saxon king Ethelstan.

ENGLAND: A. D. 938. The battle of Brunnaburgh.

Alfred the Great, dying in 901, was succeeded by his son, Edward, and Edward, in turn, was followed, A. D. 925, by his son Athelstane, or Æthalsten. In the reign of Athelstane a great league was formed against him by the Northumbrian Danes with the Scots, with the Danes of Dublin and with the Britons of Strathclyde and Cumbria. Athelstane defeated the confederates in a mighty battle, celebrated in one of the finest of Old-English war-songs, and also in one of the Sagas of the Norse tongue, as the Battle of Brunnaburgh or Brunanburh, but the site of which is unknown. "Five Kings and seven northern Iarls or earls fell in the strife. … Constantine the Scot fled to the north, mourning his fair-haired son, who perished in the slaughter. Anlaf [or Olaf, the leader of the Danes or Ostmen of Dublin], with a sad and scattered remnant of his forces, escaped to Ireland. … The victory was so decisive that, during the remainder of the reign of Athelstane, no enemy dared to rise up against him; his supremacy was acknowledged without contest, and his glory extended to distant realms."

F. Palgrave, History of the Anglo-Saxons, chapter 10.

Mr. Skene is of opinion that the battle of Brunnaburgh was fought at Aldborough, near York.

W. F. Skene, Celtic Scotland, volume 1, page 357.

ENGLAND: A. D. 940. Accession of the West Saxon king Edmund.

ENGLAND: A. D. 946. Accession of the West Saxon king Edred.

ENGLAND: A. D. 955. Accession of the West Saxon king Edwig.

{788}

ENGLAND: A. D. 958. Accession of the West Saxon king Edgar.

ENGLAND: A. D. 958. Completed union of the realm. Increase of kingly authority. Approach towards feudalism. Rise of the Witenagemot. Decline of the Freemen.

"Before Alfred's son Edward died, the whole of Mercia was incorporated with his immediate dominions. The way in which the thing was done was more remarkable than the thing itself. Like the Romans, he made the fortified towns the means of upholding his power. But unlike the Romans, he did not garrison them with colonists from amongst his own immediate dependents. He filled them, as Henry the Fowler did afterwards in Saxony, with free townsmen, whose hearts were at one with their fellow countrymen around. Before he died in 924, the Danish chiefs in the land beyond the Humber had acknowledged his overlordship, and even the Celts of Wales and Scotland had given in their submission in some form which they were not likely to interpret too strictly. His son and his two grandsons, Athelstan, Edmund, and Edred completed the work, and when after the short and troubled interval of Edwy's rule in Wessex, Edgar united the undivided realm under his sway in 958, he had no internal enemies to suppress. He allowed the Celtic Scottish King who had succeeded to the inheritance of the Pictish race to possess the old Northumbrian land north of the Tweed, where they and their descendants learned the habits and speech of Englishmen. But he treated him and the other Celtic kings distinctly as his inferiors, though it was perhaps well for him that he did not attempt to impose upon them any very tangible tokens of his supremacy. The story of his being rowed by eight kings on the Dee is doubtless only a legend by which the peaceful king was glorified in the troubled times which followed. Such a struggle, so successfully conducted, could not fail to be accompanied by a vast increase of that kingly authority which had been on the growth from the time of its first establishment. The hereditary ealdormen, the representatives of the old kingly houses, had passed away. The old tribes, or—where their limitations had been obliterated by the tide of Danish conquest, as was the case in central and northern England—the new artificial divisions which had taken their place, were now known as shires, and the very name testified that they were regarded only as parts of a greater whole. The shire mote still continued the tradition of the old popular assemblies. At its head as presidents of its deliberations were the ealdorman and the bishop, each of them owing their appointment to the king, and it was summoned by the shire-reeve or sheriff, himself even more directly an officer of the king, whose business it was to see that all the royal dues were paid within the shire. In the more general concerns of the kingdom, the king consulted with his Witan, whose meetings were called the Witenagemot, a body, which, at least for all ordinary purposes, was composed not of any representatives of the shire-motes, but of his own dependents, the ealdormen, the bishops, and a certain number of thegns whose name, meaning 'servants', implied at least at first, that they either were or had at one time been in some way in the employment of the king. … The necessities of war … combined with the sluggishness of the mass of the population to favour the growth of a military force, which would leave the tillers of the soil to their own peaceful occupations. As the conditions which make a standing army possible on a large scale did not yet exist, such a force must be afforded by a special class, and that class must be composed of those who either had too much land to till themselves, or, having no land at all, were released from the bonds which tied the cultivator to the soil, in other words, it must be composed of a landed aristocracy and its dependents. In working out this change, England was only aiming at the results which similar conditions were producing on the Continent. But just as the homogeneousness of the population drew even the foreign element of the church into harmony with the established institutions, so it was with the military aristocracy. It grouped itself round the king, and it supplemented, instead of overthrowing, the old popular assemblies. Two classes of men, the eorls and the gesiths, had been marked out from their fellows at the time of the conquest. The thegn of Edgar's day differed from both, but he had some of the distinguishing marks of either. He was not like the gesith, a mere personal follower of the king. He did not, like the eorl, owe his position to his birth. Yet his relation to the king was a close one, and he had a hold upon the land as firm as that of the older eorl. He may, perhaps, best be described as a gesith, who had acquired the position of an eorl without entirely throwing off his own characteristics. … There can be little doubt that the change began in the practice of granting special estates in the folkland, or common undivided land, to special persons. At first this land was doubtless held to be the property of the tribe. [This is now questioned by Vinogradoff and others. See FOLCLAND.] … When the king rose above the tribes, he granted it himself with the consent of his Witan. A large portion was granted to churches and monasteries. But a large portion went in privates estates, or book land, as it was called, from the book or charter which conveyed them to the king's own gesiths, or to members of his own family. The gesith thus ceased to be a mere member of the king's military household. He became a landowner as well, with special duties. to perform to the king. … He had special jurisdiction given him over his tenants and serfs, exempting him and them from the authority of the hundred mote, though they still remained, except in very exceptional cases, under the authority of the shire mote. … Even up to the Norman conquest this change was still going on. To the end, indeed, the old constitutional forms were not broken down. The hundred mote was not abandoned, where freemen enough remained to fill it. Even where all the land of a hundred had passed under the protection of a lord there was little outward change. … There was thus no actual breach of continuity in the nation. The thegnhood pushed its roots down, as it were, amongst the free classes. Nevertheless there was a danger of such a breach of continuity coming about. The freemen entered more and more largely into a condition of' dependence, and there was a great risk lest such a condition of dependence should become a condition of servitude. Here and there, by some extraordinary stroke of luck, a freeman might rise to be a thegn. But the condition of the class to which he belonged was deteriorating every day. {789} The downward progress to serfdom was too easy to take, and by large masses of the population it was already taken. Below the increasing numbers of the serfs was to be found the lower class of slaves, who were actually the property of their masters. The Witenagemot was in reality a select body of thegns, if the bishops, who held their lands in much the same way, be regarded as thegns. In was rather an inchoate House of Lords, than an inchoate Parliament, after our modern ideas. It was natural that a body of men which united a great part of the wealth with almost all the influence in the kingdom should be possessed of high constitutional powers. The Witenagemot elected the king, though as yet they always chose him out of the royal family, which was held to have sprung from the god Woden. There were even cases in which they deposed unworthy kings."

S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger, Introduction to the Study of English History, part 1, chapter 2, section 16-21.

ENGLAND: A. D. 975. Accession of the West Saxon king Edward, called The Martyr.

ENGLAND: A. D. 979. Accession of the West Saxon king Ethelred, called The Unready.

ENGLAND: A. D. 979-1016. The Danish conquest.

"Then [A. D. 979] commenced one of the longest and most disastrous reigns of the Saxon kings, with the accession of Ethelred II., justly styled Ethelred the Unready. The Northmen now renewed their plundering and conquering expeditions against England; while England had a worthless waverer for her ruler, and many of her chief men turned traitors to their king and country. Always a laggart in open war, Ethelred tried in 1001 the cowardly and foolish policy of buying off the enemies whom he dared not encounter. The tax called Dane-gelt was then levied to provide 'a tribute for the Danish men on account of the great terror which they caused.' To pay money thus was in effect to hire the enemy to renew the war. In 1002 Ethelred tried the still more weak and wicked measure of ridding himself of his enemies by treacherous massacre. Great numbers of Danes were now living in England, intermixed with the Anglo-Saxon population. Ethelred resolved to relieve himself from all real or supposed danger of these Scandinavian settlers taking part with their invading kinsmen, by sending secret orders throughout his dominions for the putting to death of every Dane, man, woman, and child, on St. Brice's Day, Nov. 13. This atrocious order was executed only in Southern England, that is, in the West-Saxon territories; but large numbers of the Danish race were murdered there while dwelling in full security among their Saxon neighbours. … Among the victims was a royal Danish lady, named Gunhilde, who was sister of Sweyn, king of Denmark, and who had married and settled in England. … The news of the massacre of St. Brice soon spread over the Continent, exciting the deepest indignation against the English and their king. Sweyn collected in Denmark a larger fleet and army than the north had ever before sent forth, and solemnly vowed to conquer England or perish in the attempt. He landed on the south coast of Devon, obtained possession of Exeter by the treachery of its governor, and then marched through western and southern England, marking every shire with fire, famine and slaughter; but he was unable to take London, which was defended against the repeated attacks of the Danes with strong courage and patriotism, such as seemed to have died out in the rest of Saxon England. In 1013, the wretched king Ethelred fled the realm and sought shelter in Normandy. Sweyn was acknowledged king in all the northern and western shires, but he died in 1014, while his vow of conquest was only partly accomplished. The English now sent for Ethelred back from Normandy, promising loyalty to him as their lawful king, 'provided he would rule over them more justly than he had done before.' Ethelred willingly promised amendment, and returned to reign amidst strife and misery for two years more. His implacable enemy, Sweyn, was indeed dead; but the Danish host which Sweyn had led thither was still in England, under the command of Sweyn's son, Canute [or Cnut], a prince equal in military prowess to his father, and far superior to him and to all other princes of the time in statesmanship and general ability. Ethelred died in 1016, while the war with Canute was yet raging. Ethelred's son, Edmund, surnamed Ironside, was chosen king by the great council then assembled in London, but great numbers of the Saxons made their submission to Canute. The remarkable personal valour of Edmund, strongly aided by the bravery of his faithful Londoners, maintained the war for nearly a year, when Canute agreed to a compromise, by which he and Edmund divided the land between them. But within a few months after this, the royal Ironside died by the hand of an assassin, and Canute obtained the whole realm of the English race. A Danish dynasty was now [A. D. 1016] established in England for three reigns."

Sir E. S. Creasy, History of England, volume 1, chapter 5.

ALSO IN: J. M. Lappenberg, England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings, volume 2, pages 151-233.

See, also, MALDEN, and ASSANDUN, BATTLES OF.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1016. Accession and death of King Edmund Ironside.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1016-1042. The Reign of the Danish kings.

"Cnut's rule was not as terrible as might have been feared. He was perfectly unscrupulous in striking down the treacherous and mischievous chieftains who had made a trade of Ethelred's weakness and the country's divisions. But he was wise and strong enough to rule, not by increasing but by allaying those divisions. Resting his power upon his Scandinavian kingdoms beyond the sea, upon his Danish countrymen in England, and his Danish huscarles, or specially trained soldiers in his service, he was able, without even the appearance of weakness, to do what in him lay to bind Dane and Englishman together as common instruments of his power. Fidelity counted more with him than birth. To bring England itself into unity was beyond his power. The device which he hit upon was operative only in hands as strong as his own. There were to be four great earls, deriving their name from the Danish word jarl, centralizing the forces of government in Wessex, in Mercia, in East Anglia, and in Northumberland. With Cnut the four were officials of the highest class. They were there because he placed them there. They would cease to be there if he so willed it. But it could hardly be that it would always be so. Some day or another, unless a great catastrophe swept away Cnut and his creation, the earldoms would pass into territorial sovereignties and the divisions of England would be made evident openly."

S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger, Introduction to the Study of English History, chapter 2, section 25.

{790}

"He [Canute] ruled nominally at least, a larger European dominion than any English sovereign has ever done; and perhaps also a more homogeneous one. No potentate of the time came near him except the king of Germany, the emperor, with whom he was allied as an equal. The king of the Norwegians, the Danes, and a great part of the Swedes, was in a position to found a Scandinavian empire with Britain annexed. Canute's division of his dominions on his death-bed, showed that he saw this to be impossible; Norway, for a century and a half after his strong hand was removed, was broken up amongst an anarchical crew of piratic and blood-thirsty princes, nor could Denmark be regarded as likely to continue united with England. The English nation was too much divided and demoralised to retain hold on Scandinavia, even if the condition of the latter had allowed it. Hence Canute determined that during his life, as after his death, the nations should be governed on their own principles. … The four nations of the English, Northumbrians, East Angles, Mercians and West Saxons, might, each under their own national leader, obey a sovereign who was strong enough to enforce peace amongst them. The great earldoms of Canute's reign were perhaps a nearer approach to a feudal division of England than anything which followed the Norman Conquest. … And the extent to which this creation of the four earldoms affected the history of the next half-century cannot be exaggerated. The certain tendency of such an arrangement to become hereditary, and the certain tendency of the hereditary occupation of great fiefs ultimately to overwhelm the royal power, are well exemplified. … The Norman Conquest restored national unity at a tremendous temporary sacrifice, just as the Danish Conquest in other ways, and by a reverse process, had helped to create it."

W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 7, section 77.

Canute died in 1035. He was succeeded by his two sons, Harold Harefoot (1035-1040) and Harthacnute or Hardicanute (1040-1042), after which the Saxon line of kings was momentarily restored.

E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest of England, chapter 6.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1035. Accession of Harold, son of Cnut.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1040. Accession of Harthacnut, or Hardicanute.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1042. Accession of Edward the Confessor.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1042-1066. The last of the Saxon kings.

"The love which Canute had inspired by his wise and conciliatory rule was dissipated by the bad government of his sons, Harold and Harthacnut, who ruled in turn. After seven years of misgovernment, or rather anarchy, England, freed from the hated rule of Harthacnut by his death, returned to its old line of kings, and 'all folk chose Edward [surnamed The Confessor, son of Ethelred the Unready] to king,' as was his right by birth. Not that he was, according to our ideas, the direct heir, since Edward, the son of Edmund Ironside, still lived, an exile in Hungary. But the Saxons, by choosing Edward the Confessor, reasserted for the last time their right to elect that one of the hereditary line who was most available. With the reign of Edward the Confessor the Norman Conquest really began. We have seen the connection between England and Normandy begun by the marriage of Ethelred the Unready to Emma the daughter of Richard the Fearless, and cemented by the refuge offered to the English exiles in the court of the Norman duke. Edward had long found a home there in Canute's time. … Brought up under Norman influence, Edward had contracted the ideas and sympathies of his adopted home. On his election to the English throne the French tongue became the language of the court, Norman favourites followed in his train, to be foisted into important offices of State and Church, and thus inaugurate that Normanizing policy which was to draw on the Norman Conquest. Had it not been for this, William would never have had any claim on England." The Normanizing policy of king Edward roused the opposition of a strong English party, headed by the great West-Saxon Earl Godwine, who had been lifted from an obscure origin to vast power in England by the favor of Canute, and whose son Harold held the earldom of East Anglia. "Edward, raised to the throne chiefly through the influence of Godwine, shortly married his daughter, and at first ruled England leaning on the assistance, and almost overshadowed by the power of the great earl." But Edward was Norman at heart and Godwine was thoroughly English; whence quarrels were not long in arising. They came to the crisis in 1051, by reason of a bloody tumult at Dover, provoked by insolent conduct on the part of a train of French visitors returning home from Edward's Court. Godwine was commanded to punish the townsmen of Dover and refused, whereupon the king obtained a sentence of outlawry, not only against the earl, but against his sons. "Godwine, obliged to bow before the united power of his enemies, was forced to fly the land. He went to Flanders with his son Swegen, while Harold and Leofwine went to Ireland, to be well received by Dermot king of Leinster. Many Englishmen seem to have followed him in his exile: for a year the foreign party was triumphant, and the first stage of the Norman Conquest complete. It was at this important crisis that William [Duke of Normandy], secure at home, visited his cousin Edward. … Friendly relations we may be sure had existed between, the two cousins, and if, as is not improbable, William had begun to hope that he might some day succeed to the English throne, what more favourable opportunity for a visit could have been found? Edward had lost all hopes of ever having any children. … William came, and it would seem, gained all that he desired. For this most probably was the date of some promise on Edward's part that William should succeed him on his death. The whole question is beset with difficulties. The Norman chroniclers alone mention it, and give no dates. Edward had no right to will away his crown, the disposition of which lay with King and Witenagemot (or assembly of Wise Men, the grandees of the country), and his last act was to reverse the promise, if ever given, in favour of Harold, Godwine's son. But were it not for some such promise, it is hard to see how William could have subsequently made the Normans and the world believe in the sacredness of his claim. … William returned to Normandy; but next year Edward was forced to change his policy." Godwine and his sons returned to England, with a fleet at their backs; London declared for them, and the king submitted himself to a reconciliation. {791} "The party of Godwine once more ruled supreme, and no mention was made of the gift of the crown to William. Godwine, indeed, did not long survive his restoration, but dying the year after, 1053, left his son Harold Earl of the West-Saxons and the most important man in England." King Edward the Confessor lived yet thirteen years after this time, during which period Earl Harold grew continually in influence and conspicuous headship of the English party. In 1062 it was Harold's misfortune to be shipwrecked on the coast of France, and he was made captive. Duke William of Normandy intervened in his behalf and obtained his release; and "then, as the price of his assistance, extorted an oath from Harold, soon to be used against him. Harold, it is said, became his man, promised to marry 'William's daughter Adela, to place Dover at once in William's hands, and support his claim to the English throne on Edward's death. By a stratagem of William's the oath was unwittingly taken on holy relics, hidden by the duke under the table on which Harold laid hands to swear, whereby, according to the notions of those days, the oath was rendered more binding." But two years later, when Edward the Confessor died, the English Witenagemot chose Harold to be king, disregarding Edward's promise and Harold's oath to the Duke of Normandy.

A. H. Johnson, The Normans in Europe, chapters 10 and 12.

ALSO IN: E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest of England, chapters 7-10.

J. R. Green, The Conquest of England, chapter 10.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1066. Election and coronation of Harold.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1066 (spring and summer). Preparations of Duke William to enforce his claim to the English crown.

On receiving news of Edward's death and of Harold's acceptance of the crown, Duke William of Normandy lost no time in demanding from Harold the performance of the engagements to which he had pledged himself by his oath. Harold answered that the oath had no binding effect, by reason of the compulsion under which it was given; that the crown of England was not his to bestow, and that, being the chosen king, he could not marry without consent of the Witenagemot. When the Duke had this reply he proceeded with vigor to secure from his own knights and barons the support he would need for the enforcing of his rights, as he deemed them, to the sovereignty of the English realm. A great parliament of the Norman barons was held at Lillebonne, for the consideration of the matter. "In this memorable meeting there was much diversity of opinion. The Duke could not command his vassals to cross the sea; their tenures did not compel them to such service. William could only request their aid to fight his battles in England: many refused to engage in this dangerous expedition, and great debates arose. …William, who could not restore order, withdrew into another apartment: and, calling the barons to him one by one, he argued and reasoned with each of these sturdy vassals separately, and apart from the others. He exhausted all the arts of persuasion;—their present courtesy, he engaged, should not be tamed into a precedent, … and the fertile fields of England should be the recompense of their fidelity. Upon this prospect of remuneration, the barons assented. … William did not confine himself to his own subjects. All the adventurers and adventurous spirits of the neighbouring states were invited to join his standard. … To all, such promises were made as should best incite them to the enterprise—lands,—liveries,—money,—according to their rank and degree; and the port of St. Pierre-sur-Dive was appointed as the place where all the forces should assemble. William had discovered four most valid reasons for the prosecution of his offensive warfare against a neighbouring people:—the bequest made by his cousin;—the perjury of Harold;—the expulsion of the Normans, at the instigation, as he alleged, of Godwin;—and, lastly, the massacre of the Danes by Ethelred on St. Brice's Day. The alleged perjury of Harold enabled William to obtain the sanction of the Papal See. Alexander, the Roman Pontiff, allowed, nay, even urged him to punish the crime, provided England, when conquered, should be held as the fief of St. Peter. … Hildebrand, Archdeacon of the Church of Rome, afterwards the celebrated Pope Gregory VII., greatly assisted by the support which he gave to the decree. As a visible token of protection, the Pope transmitted to William the consecrated banner, the Gonfanon of St. Peter, and a precious ring, in which a relic of the chief of the Apostles was enclosed."

Sir F. Palgrave, History of Normandy and England, volume 3, pages 300-303.

"William convinced, or seemed to convince, all men out of England and Scandinavia that his claim to the English crown was just and holy, and that it was a good work to help him to assert it in arms. … William himself doubtless thought his own claim the better; he deluded himself as he deluded others. But we are more concerned with William as a statesman; and if it be statesmanship to adapt means to ends, whatever the ends may be, if it be statesmanship to make men believe the worse cause is the better, then no man ever showed higher statesmanship than William showed in his great pleading before all Western Christendom. … Others had claimed crowns; none had taken such pains to convince all mankind that the claim was a good one. Such an appeal to public opinion marks on one side a great advance."

E. A. Freeman, William the Conqueror, chapter 6.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1066 (September). The invasion of Tostig and Harold Hardrada and their overthrow at Stamford Bridge.

"Harold [the English king], as one of his misfortunes, had to face two powerful armies, in distant parts of the kingdom, almost at the same time. Rumours concerning the intentions and preparations of the Duke of Normandy soon reached England. During the greater part of the summer, Harold, at the head of a large naval and military force, had been on the watch along the English coast. But months passed away and no enemy became visible. William, it was said, had been apprised of the measures which had been taken to meet him. … Many supposed that, on various grounds, the enterprise had been abandoned. Provisions also, for so great an army, became scarce. The men began to disperse; and Harold, disbanding the remainder, returned to London. But the news now came that Harold Hardrada, king of Norway, had landed in the north, and was ravaging the country in conjunction with Tostig, Harold's elder brother. This event came from one of those domestic feuds which did so much at this juncture to weaken the power of the English. {792} Tostig had exercised his authority in Northumbria [as earl] in the most arbitrary manner, and had perpetrated atrocious crimes in furtherance of his objects. The result was an amount of disaffection which seems to have put it out of the power of his friends to sustain him. He had married a daughter of Baldwin, count of Flanders, and so became brother-in-law to the duke of Normandy. His brother Harold, as he affirmed, had not done a brother's part towards him, and he was more disposed, in consequence, to side with the Norman than with the Saxon in the approaching struggle. The army with which he now appeared consisted mostly of Norwegians and Flemings, and their avowed object was to divide not less than half the kingdom between them. … [The young Mercian earls Edwin and Morcar] summoned their forces … to repel the invasion under Tostig. Before Harold could reach the north, they hazarded an engagement at a place named Fulford, on the Ouse, not far from Bishopstoke. Their measures, however, were not wisely taken. They were defeated with great loss. The invaders seem to have regarded this victory as deciding the fate of that part of the kingdom. They obtained hostages at York, and then moved to Stamford Bridge, where they began the work of dividing the northern parts of England between them. But in the midst of these proceedings clouds of dust were seen in the distance. The first thought was, that the multitude which seemed to be approaching must be friends. But the illusion was soon at an end. The dust raised was by the march of an army of West Saxons under the command of Harold."

R. Vaughan, Revolutions of English History, book 3, chapter 1.

"Of the details of that awful day [Sept. 25, 1066] we have no authentic record. We have indeed a glorious description [in the Heimskringla of Snorro Sturleson], conceived in the highest spirit of the warlike poetry of the North; but it is a description which, when critically examined, proves to be hardly more worthy of belief than a battle-piece in the Iliad. … At least we know that the long struggle of that day was crowned by complete victory on the side of England. The leaders of the invading host lay each man ready for all that England had to give him, his seven feet of English ground. There Harold of Norway, the last of the ancient Sea-Kings, yielded up that fiery soul which had braved death in so many forms and in so many lands. … There Tostig, the son of Godwine, an exile and a traitor, ended, in crime and sorrow a life which had begun with promises not less bright than that of his royal brother. … The whole strength of the Northern army was broken; a few only escaped by flight, and found means to reach the ships at Riccall."

E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest of England, chapter 14, section. 4.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1066 (October). The Norman invasion and battle of Senlac or Hastings.

The battle of Stamford-bridge was fought on Monday, September 25, A. D. 1066. Three days later, on the Thursday, September 28, William of Normandy landed his more formidable army of invasion at Pevensey, on the extreme southeastern coast. The news of William's landing reached Harold, at York, on the following Sunday, it is thought, and his victorious but worn and wasted army was led instantly back, by forced marches, over the route it had traversed no longer than the week before. Waiting at London a few days for fresh musters to join him, the English king set out from that city October 12, and arrived on the following day at a point seven miles from the camp which his antagonist had entrenched at Hastings. Meantime the Normans had been cruelly ravaging the coast country, by way of provoking attack. Harold felt himself driven by the devastation they committed to face the issue of battle without waiting for a stronger rally. "Advancing near enough to the coast to check William's ravages, he intrenched himself on the hill of Senlac, a low spur of the Sussex Downs, near Hastings, in a position which covered London, and forced the Norman army to concentrate. With a host subsisting by pillage, to concentrate is to starve, and no alternative was left to William but a decisive victory or ruin. Along the higher ground that leads from Hastings the Duke led his men in the dim dawn of an October morning to the mound of Telham. It was from this point, that the Normans saw the host of the English gathered thickly behind a rough trench and a stockade on the height of Senlac. Marshy ground covered their right. … A general charge of the Norman foot opened the battle; in front rode the minstrel Taillefer, tossing his sword in the air and catching it again while he chanted the song of Roland. He was the first of the host who struck a blow, and he was the first to fall. The charge broke vainly on the stout stockade behind which the English warriors plied axe and javelin with fierce cries of 'Out, Out,' and the repulse of the Norman footmen was followed by the repulse of the Norman horse. Again and again the Duke rallied and led them to the fatal stockade. … His Breton troops, entangled in the marshy ground on his left, broke in disorder, and a cry arose, as the panic spread through the army, that the Duke was slain. 'I live,' shouted William as he tore off his helmet, 'and by God's help will conquer yet.' Maddened by repulse, the Duke spurred right at the standard; unhorsed, his terrible mace struck down Gyrth, the King's brother, and stretched Leofwine, a second of Godwine's sons, beside him; again dismounted, a blow from his hand hurled to the ground an unmannerly rider who would not lend him his steed. Amid the roar and tumult of the battle he turned the flight he had arrested into the means of victory. Broken as the stockade was by his desperate onset, the shield-wall of the warriors behind it still held the Normans at bay, when William by a feint of flight drew a part of the English force from their post of vantage. Turning on his disorderly pursuers, the Duke cut them to pieces, broke through the abandoned line, and was master of the central plateau, while French and Bretons made good their ascent on either flank. At three the hill seemed won, at six the fight still raged around the standard, where Harold's hus-carls stood stubbornly at bay on the spot marked afterward by the high altar of Battle Abbey. An order from the Duke at last brought his archers to the front, and their arrow-flight told heavily on the dense masses crowded around the King. As the sun went down, a shaft pierced Harold's right eye; he fell between the royal ensigns, and the battle closed with a desperate mélée over his corpse."

J. R. Green, A Short History of the English People, chapter 2, section 4.

ALSO IN: E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest of England, chapter 15, section 4.

E. S. Creasy, Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, chapter 8.

Wace, Roman de Rou, translated by Sir A. Malet.

{793}

England: A. D. 1066-1071. The Finishing of the Norman Conquest.

"It must be well understood that this great victory [of Senlac] did not make Duke William King nor put him in possession of the whole land. He still held only part of Sussex, and the people of the rest of the kingdom showed as yet no mind to submit to him. If England had had a leader left like Harold or Gyrth, William might have had to fight as many battles as Cnut had, and that with much less chance of winning in the end. For a large part of England fought willingly on Cnut's side, while William had no friends in England at all, except a few Norman settlers. William did not call himself King till he was regularly crowned more than two months later, and even then he had real possession only of about a third of the kingdom. It was more than three years before he had full possession of all. Still the great fight on Senlac none the less settled the fate of England. For after that fight William never met with any general resistance. … During the year 1067 William made no further conquests; all western and northern England remained unsubdued; but, except in Kent and Herefordshire, there was no fighting in any part of the land which had really submitted. The next two years were the time in which all England was really conquered. The former part of 1068 gave him the West. The latter part of that year gave him central and northern England as far as Yorkshire, the extreme north and northwest being still unsubdued. The attempt to win Durham in the beginning of 1069 led to two revolts at York. Later in the year all the north and west was again in arms, and the Danish fleet [of King Swegen, in league with the English patriots] came. But the revolts were put down one by one, and the great winter campaign of 1069-1070 conquered the still unsubdued parts, ending with the taking of Chester. Early in 1070 the whole land was for the first time in Williams's possession; there was no more fighting, and he was able to give his mind to the more peaceful part of his schemes, what we may call the conquest of the native Church by the appointment of foreign bishops. But in the summer of 1070 began the revolt of the Fenland, and the defence of Ely, which lasted till the autumn of 1071. After that William was full King everywhere without dispute. There was no more national resistance; there was no revolt of any large part of the country. … The conquest of the land, as far as fighting goes, was now finished."

E. A. Freeman, Short History of the Norman Conquest of England, chapter 8, section 9; chapter 10, section 16.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1067-1087. The spoils of the Conquest.

"The Norman army … remained concentrated around London [in the winter of 1067], and upon the southern and eastern coasts nearest Gaul. The partition of the wealth of the invaded territory now almost solely occupied them. Commissioners went over the whole extent of country in which the army had left garrisons; they took an exact inventory of property of every kind, public and private, carefully registering every particular. … A close inquiry was made into the names of all the English partisans of Harold, who had either died in battle, or survived the defeat, or by involuntary delays had been prevented from joining the royal standard. All the property of these three classes of men, lands, revenues, furniture, houses, were confiscated; the children of the first class were declared forever disinherited; the second class, were, in like manner, wholly dispossessed of their estates and property of every kind, and, says one of the Norman writers, were only too grateful for being allowed to retain their lives. Lastly, those who had not taken up arms were also despoiled of all they possessed, for having had the intention of taking up arms; but, by special grace, they were allowed to entertain the hope that after many long years of obedience and devotion to the foreign power, not they, indeed, but their sons, might perhaps obtain from their new masters some portion of their paternal heritage. Such was the law of the conquest, according to the unsuspected testimony of a man nearly contemporary with and of the race of the conquerors [Richard Lenoir or Noirot, bishop of Ely in the 12th century]. The immense product of this universal spoliation became the pay of those adventurers of every nation who had enrolled under the banner of the duke of Normandy. … Some received their pay in money, others had stipulated that they should have a Saxon wife, and William, says the Norman chronicle, gave them in marriage noble dames, great heiresses, whose husbands had fallen in the battle. One, only, among the knights who had accompanied the conqueror, claimed neither lands, gold, nor wife, and would accept none of the spoils of the conquered. His name was Guilbert Fitz-Richard: he said that he had accompanied his lord to England because such was his duty, but that stolen goods had no attraction for him."

A. Thierry, History of the Conquest of England by the Normans, book 4.

"Though many confiscations took place, in order to gratify the Norman army, yet the mass of property was left in the hands of its former possessors. Offices of high trust were bestowed upon Englishmen, even upon those whose family renown might have raised the most aspiring thoughts. But, partly through the insolence and injustice of William's Norman vassals, partly through the suspiciousness natural to a man conscious of having overturned the national government, his yoke soon became more heavy. The English were oppressed; they rebelled, were subdued, and oppressed again. … An extensive spoliation of property accompanied these revolutions. It appears by the great national survey of Domesday Book, completed near the close of the Conqueror's reign, that the tenants in capite of the crown were generally foreigners. … But inferior freeholders were much less disturbed in their estates than the higher. … The valuable labours of Sir Henry Ellis, in presenting us with a complete analysis of Domesday Book, afford an opportunity, by his list of mesne tenants at the time of the survey, to form some approximation to the relative numbers of English and foreigners holding manors under the immediate vassals of the crown. … Though I will not now affirm or deny that they were a majority, they [the English] form a large proportion of nearly 8,000 mesne tenants, who are summed up by the diligence of Sir Henry Ellis. … {794} This might induce us to suspect that, great as the spoliation must appear in modern times, and almost completely as the nation was excluded from civil power in the commonwealth, there is some exaggeration in the language of those writers who represent them as universal reduced to a state of penury and servitude. And this suspicion may be in some degree just. Yet those writers, and especial the most English in feeling of them all, M. Thierry, are warranted by the language of contemporary authorities."

H. Hallam, The Middle Ages. chapter 8, part 2.

"By right of conquest William claimed nothing. He had come to take his crown, and he had unluckily met with some opposition in taking it. The crown-lands of King Edward passed of course to his successor. As for the lands of other men, in William's theory all was forfeited to the crown. The lawful heir had been driven to seek his kingdom in arms; no Englishman had helped him; many Englishmen had fought against him. All then were directly or indirectly traitors. The King might lawfully deal with the lands of all as his own. … After the general redemption of lands, gradually carried out as William's power advanced, no general blow was dealt at Englishmen as such. … Though the land had never seen so great a confiscation, or one so largely for the behoof of foreigners, yet there was nothing new in the thing itself. … Confiscation of land was the every-day punishment for various public and private crimes. … Once granting the original wrong of his coming at all and bringing a host of strangers with him, there is singularly little to blame in the acts of the Conqueror."

E. A. Freeman, William the Conqueror, pages 102-104, 126.

"After each effort [of revolt] the royal hand was laid on more heavily: more and more land changed owners, and with the change of owners the title changed. The complicated and unintelligible irregularities of the Anglo-Saxon tenures were exchanged for the simple and uniform feudal theory. … It was not the change from alodial to feudal so much as from confusion to order. The actual amount of dispossession was no doubt greatest in the higher ranks."

W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 9, section. 95.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1069-1071. The Camp of Refuge in the Fens.

"In the northern part of Cambridgeshire there is a vast extent of low and marshy land, intersected in every direction by rivers. All the waters from the centre of England which do not flow into the Thames or the Trent, empty themselves into these marshes, which in the latter end of autumn overflow, cover the land, and are charged with fogs and vapours. A portion of this damp and swampy country was then, as now, called the Isle of Ely; another the Isle of Thorney, a third the Isle of Croyland. This district, almost a moving bog, impracticable for cavalry and for soldiers heavily armed, had more than once served as a refuge for the Saxons in the time of the Danish conquest; towards the close of the year 1069 it became the rendezvous of several bands of patriots from various quarters, assembling against the Normans. Former chieftains, now dispossessed of their lands, successively repaired hither with their clients, some by land, others by water, by the mouths of the rivers. They here constructed entrenchments of earth and wood, and established an extensive armed station, which took the name of the Camp of Refuge. The foreigners at first hesitated to attack them amidst their rushes and willows, and thus gave them time to transmit messages in every direction, at home and abroad, to the friends of old England. Become powerful, they undertook a partisan war by land and by sea, or, as the conquerors called it, robbery and piracy."

A. Thierry, History of the Conquest of England by the Normans, book 4.

"Against the new tyranny the free men of the Danelagh and of Northumbria rose. If Edward the descendant of Cerdic had been little to them, William the descendant of Rollo was still less. … So they rose, and fought; too late, it may be, and without unity or purpose; and they were worsted by an enemy who had both unity and purpose; whom superstition, greed, and feudal discipline kept together, at least in England, in one compact body of unscrupulous and terrible confederates. And theirs was a land worth fighting for—a good land and large: from Humber mouth inland to the Trent and merry Sherwood, across to Chester and the Dee, round by Leicester and the five burghs of the Danes; eastward again to Huntingdon and Cambridge (then a poor village on the site of an old Roman town); and then northward again into the wide fens, the land of the Girvii, where the great central plateau of England slides into the sea, to form, from the rain and river washings of eight shires, lowlands of a fertility inexhaustible, because ever-growing to this day. Into those fens, as into a natural fortress, the Anglo-Danish noblemen crowded down instinctively from the inland to make their last stand against the French. … Most gallant of them all, and their leader in the fatal struggle against William, was Hereward the Wake, Lord of Bourne and ancestor of that family of Wake, the arms of whom appear on the cover of this book."

C. Kingsley, Hereward the Wake, Prelude.

The defence of the Camp of Refuge was maintained until October, 1071, when the stronghold is said to have been betrayed by the monks of Ely, who grew tired of the disturbance of their peace. But Hereward did not submit. He made his escape and various accounts are given of his subsequent career and his fate.

E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest of England, chapter 20, section 1.

ALSO IN: C. M. Yonge, Cameos from English History, first series, chapter 8.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1085-1086. The Domesday Survey and Domesday Book.

"The distinctive characteristic of the Norman kings [of England] was their exceeding greed, and the administrative system was so directed as to insure the exaction of the highest possible imposts. From this bent originated the great registration that William [the Conqueror] caused to be taken of all lands, whether holden in fee or at rent; as well as the census of the entire population. The respective registers were preserved in the Cathedral of Winchester, and by the Norman were designated 'Ie grand rôle,' 'Ie rôle royal,' 'Ie rôle de Winchester'; but by the Saxons were termed 'the Book of the Last Judgment,' 'Doomesdaege Boc,' 'Doomsday Book.'"

E. Fischel, The English Constitution, chapter 1.

For a different statement see the following: "The recently attempted invasion from Denmark seems to have impressed the king with the desirability of· an accurate knowledge of his resources, military and fiscal, both of which were based upon the land. The survey was completed in the remarkably short space of a single year [1085-1086]. In each shire the commissioners made their inquiries by the oaths of the sheriffs, the barons and their Norman retainers, the parish priests, the reeves and six ceorls of each township. {795} The result of their labours was a minute description of all the lands of the kingdom, with the exception of the four northern counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland and Durham, and part of what is now Lancashire. It enumerates the tenants-in-chief, under tenants, freeholders, villeins, and serfs, describes the nature and obligations of the tenures, the value in the time of King Eadward, at the conquest, and at the date of the survey, and, which gives the key to the whole inquiry, informs the king whether any advance in the valuation could be made. … The returns were transmitted to Winchester, digested, and recorded in two volumes which have descended to posterity under the name of Domesday Book. The name itself is probably derived from Domus Dei, the appellation of a chapel or vault of the cathedral at Winchester in which the survey was at first deposited."

T. P. Taswell-Langmead, English Constitutional History, chapter 2.

"Of the motives which induced the Conqueror and his council to undertake the Survey we have very little reliable information, and much that has been written on the subject savours more of a deduction from the result than of a knowledge of the immediate facts. We have the statement from the Chartulary of St. Mary's, Worcester, of the appointment of the Commissioners by the king himself to make the Survey. We have also the heading of the 'Inquisitio Eliensis' which purports to give, and probably does truly give, the items of the articles of inquiry, which sets forth as follows:

I. What is the manor called? II. Who held it in the time of King Edward? III. Who now holds it? IV. How many hides? V. What teams are there in demesne? VI. What teams of the men? VII. What villans? VIII. What cottagers? IX. What bondmen? X. What freemen and what sokemen? XI. What woods? XII. What meadow? XIII. What pastures? XIV. What mills? XV. What fisheries? XVI. What is added or taken away? XVII. What the whole was worth together, and what now? XVIII. How much each freeman or sokeman had or has?

All this to be estimated three times, viz. in the time of King Edward, and when King William gave it, and how it is now, and if more can be had for it than has been had. This document is, I think, the best evidence we have of the form of the inquiry, and it tallies strictly with the form of the various returns as we now have them. … An external evidence failing, we are driven back to the Record itself for evidence of the Conqueror's intention in framing it, and anyone who carefully studies it will be driven to the inevitable conclusion that it was framed and designed in the spirit of perfect equity. Long before the Conquest, in the period between the death of Alfred and that of Edward the Confessor, the kingdom had been rapidly declining into a state of disorganisation and decay. The defence of the kingdom and the administration of justice and keeping of the peace could not be maintained by the king's revenues. The tax of Danegeld, instituted by Ethelred at first to buy peace of the Danes, and afterwards to maintain the defence of the kingdom, had more and more come to be levied unequally and unfairly. The Church had obtained enormous remissions of its liability, and its possessions were constantly increasing. Powerful subjects had obtained further remission, and the tax had come to be irregularly collected and was burdensome upon the smaller holders and their poor tenants, while the nobility and the Church escaped with a small share in the burden. In short the tax had come to be collected upon an old and uncorrected assessment. It had probably dwindled in amount, and at last had been ultimately remitted by Edward the Confessor. Anarchy and confusion appears to have reigned throughout the realm. The Conqueror was threatened with foreign invasion, and pressed on all sides by complaints of unfair taxation on the part of his subjects. Estates had been divided and subdivided, and the incidence of the tax was unequal and unjust. He had to face the difficulties before him and to count the resources of his kingdom for its defence, and the means of doing so were not at hand. In this situation his masterly and order-loving Norman mind instituted this great inquiry, but ordered it to be taken (as I maintain the study of the Book will show) in the most public and open manner, and with the utmost impartiality, with the view of levying the taxes of the kingdom equally and fairly upon all. The articles of his inquiry show that he was prepared to study the resources of his kingdom and consider the liability of his subjects from every possible point of view."

Stuart Moore, On the Study of Domesday Book (Domesday Studies, volume 1).

"Domesday Book is a vast mine of materials for the social and economical history of our country, a mine almost inexhaustible, and to a great extent as yet unworked. Among national documents it is unique. There is nothing that approaches it in interest and value except the Landnámabók, which records the names of the original settlers in Iceland and the designations they bestowed upon the places where they settled, and tells us how the island was taken up and apportioned among them. Such a document for England, describing the way in which our forefathers divided the territory they conquered, and how 'they called the lands after their own names,' would indeed be priceless. But the Domesday Book does, indirectly, supply materials for the history of the English as well as of the Norman Conquest, for it records not only how the lands of England were divided among the Norman host which conquered at Senlac, but it gives us also the names of the Saxon and Danish holders who possessed the lands before the great battle which changed all the future history of England, and enables us to trace the extent of the transfer of the land from Englishmen to Normans; it shows how far the earlier owners were reduced to tenants, and by its enumeration of the classes of population—freemen, sokemen, villans, cottiers, and slaves—it indicates the nature and extent of the earlier conquests. Thus we learn that in the West of England slaves were numerous, while in the East they were almost unknown, and hence we gather that in the districts first subdued the British population was exterminated or driven off, while in the West it was reduced to servitude."

I. Taylor, Domesday Survivals (Domesday Studies, volume 1).

ALSO IN: E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest, chapters 21-22 and appendix A in volume 5.

W. de Gray Birch, Domesday Book.

F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book (Dict. Pol. Econ.).

{796}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1087-1135. The sons of the Conqueror and their reigns.

William the Conqueror, when he died, left Normandy and Maine to his elder son Robert, the English crown to his stronger son, William, called Rufus, or the Red, and only a legacy of £5,000 to his third son, Henry, called Beauclerc, or The Scholar. The Conqueror's half-brother, Odo, soon began to persuade the Norman barons in England to displace William Rufus and plant Robert on the English throne. "The claim of Robert to succeed his father in England, was supported by the respected rights of primogeniture. But the Anglo-Saxon crown had always been elective. … Primogeniture … gave at that time no right to the crown of England, independent of the election of its parliamentary assembly. Having secured this title, the power of Rufus rested on the foundation most congenial with the feelings and institutions of the nation, and from their partiality received a popular support, which was soon experienced to be impregnable. The danger compelled the king to court his people by promises to diminish their grievances; which drew 30,000 knights spontaneously to his banners, happy to have got a sovereign distinct from hated Normandy. The invasion of Robert, thus resisted by the English people, effected nothing but some temporary devastations. … The state of Normandy, under Robert's administration, for some time furnished an ample field for his ambitious uncle's activity. It continued to exhibit a negligent government in its most vicious form. … Odo's politics only facilitated the Reannexation of Normandy to England. But this event was not completed in William's reign. When he retorted the attempt of Robert, by an invasion of Normandy, the great barons of both countries found themselves endangered by the conflict, and combined their interest to persuade their respective sovereigns to a fraternal pacification. The most important article of their reconciliation provided, that if either should die without issue, the survivor should inherit his dominions. Hostilities were then abandoned; mutual courtesies ensued; and Robert visited England as his brother's guest. The mind of William the Red King, was cast in no common mould. It had all the greatness and the defects of the chivalric character, in its strong but rudest state. Impetuous, daring, original, magnanimous, and munificent; it was also harsh, tyrannical, and selfish; conceited of its own powers, loose in its moral principles, and disdaining consequences. … While Lanfranc lived, William had a counsellor whom he respected, and whose good opinion he was careful to preserve. … The death of Lanfranc removed the only man whose wisdom and influence could have meliorated the king's ardent, but undisciplined temper. It was his misfortune, on this event, to choose for his favourite minister, an able, but an unprincipled man. … The minister advised the king, on the death of every prelate, to seize all his temporal possessions. … The great revenues obtained from this violent innovation, tempted both the king and his minister to increase its productiveness, by deferring the nomination of every new prelate for an indefinite period. Thus he kept many bishoprics, and among them the see of Canterbury, vacant for some years; till a severe illness alarming his conscience, he suddenly appointed Anselm to the dignity; … His disagreement with Anselm soon began. The prelate injudiciously began the battle by asking the king to restore, not only the possessions of his see, which were enjoyed by Lanfranc—a fair request—but also the lands which had before that time belonged to it; a demand that, after so many years alteration of property, could not be complied with without great disturbance of other persons. Anselm also exacted of the king that in all things which concerned the church, his counsels should be taken in preference to every other. … Though Anselm, as a literary man, was an honour and a benefit to his age, yet his monastic and studious habits prevented him from having that social wisdom, that knowledge of human nature, that discreet use of his own virtuous firmness, and that mild management of turbulent power, which might have enabled him to have exerted much of the influence of Lanfranc over the mind of his sovereign. … Anselm, seeing the churches and abbeys oppressed in their property, by the royal orders, resolved to visit Rome, and to concert with the pope the measures most adapted to overawe the king. … William threatened, that if he did go to Rome, he would seize all the possessions of the archbishopric. Anselm declared, that he would rather travel naked and on foot, than desist from his resolution; and he went to Dover with his pilgrim's staff and wallet. He was searched before his departure, that he might carry away no money, and was at last allowed to sail. But the king immediately executed his threat, and sequestered all his lands and property. This was about three years before the end of the reign. … Anselm continued in Italy till William's death. The possession of Normandy was a leading object of William's ambition, and he gradually attained a preponderance in it. His first invasion compelled Robert to make some cessions; these were increased on his next attack: and when Robert determined to join the Crusaders, he mortgaged the whole of Normandy to William for three years, for 10,000 marks. He obtained the usual success of a powerful invasion in Wales. The natives were overpowered on the plains, but annoyed the invaders in their mountains. He marched an army against Malcolm, king of Scotland, to punish his incursions. Robert advised the Scottish king to conciliate William; Malcolm yielded to his counsel and accompanied Robert to the English court, but on his return, was treacherously attacked by Mowbray, the earl of Northumbria, and killed. William regretted the perfidious cruelty of the action. … The government of William appears to have been beneficial, both to England and Normandy. To the church it was oppressive. … He had scarcely reigned twelve years, when he fell by a violent death." He was hunting with a few attendants in the New Forest. "It happened that, his friends dispersing in pursuit of game, he was left alone, as some authorities intimate, with Walter Tyrrel, a noble knight, whom he had brought out of France, and admitted to his table, and to whom he was much attached. As the sun was about to set, a stag passed before the king, who discharged an arrow at it. … At the same moment, another stag crossing, Walter Tyrrel discharged an arrow at it. At this precise juncture, a shaft struck the king, and buried itself in his breast. He fell, without a word, upon the arrow, and expired on the spot. … It seems to be a questionable point, whether Walter Tyrrel actually shot the king. That opinion was certainly the most prevalent at the time, both here and in France. … {797} None of the authorities intimate a belief of a purposed assassination; and, therefore, it would be unjust now to impute it to anyone. … Henry was hunting in a different part of the New Forest when Rufus fell. … He left the body to the casual charity of the passing rustic, and rode precipitately to Winchester, to seize the royal treasure. … He obtained the treasure, and proceeding hastily to London, was on the following Sunday, the third day after William's death, elected king, and crowned. … He began his reign by removing the unpopular agents of his unfortunate brother. He recalled Anselm, and conciliated the clergy. He gratified the nation, by abolishing the oppressive exactions of the previous reign. He assured many benefits to the barons, and by a charter, signed on the day of his coronation, restored to the people their Anglo-Saxon laws and privileges, as amended by his father; a measure which ended the pecuniary oppressions of his brother, and which favoured the growing liberties of the nation. The Conqueror had noticed Henry's expanding intellect very early; had given him the best education which the age could supply. … He became the most learned monarch of his day, and acquired and deserved the surname of Beauclerc, or fine scholar. No wars, no cares of state, could afterwards deprive him of his love of literature. The nation soon felt the impulse and the benefit of their sovereign's intellectual taste. He acceded at the age of 32, and gratified the nation by marrying and crowning Mathilda, daughter of the sister of Edgar Etheling by Malcolm the king of Scotland, who had been waylaid and killed."

S. Turner, History of England during the Middle Ages, volume 1, chapters 5-6.

The Norman lords, hating the "English ways" of Henry, were soon in rebellion, undertaking to put Robert of Normandy (who had returned from the Crusade) in his place. The quarrel went on till the battle of Tenchebray, 1106, in which Robert was defeated and taken prisoner. He was imprisoned for life. The duchy and the kingdom were again united. The war in Normandy led to a war with Louis king of France, who had espoused Robert's cause. It was ended by the battle of Brêmule, 1119, where the French suffered a bad defeat. In Henry's reign all south Wales was conquered; but the north Welsh princes held out. Another expedition against them was preparing, when, in 1135, Henry fell ill at the Castle of Lions in Normandy, and died.

E. A. Freeman, The Reign of William Rufus and accession of Henry I.

ALSO IN: Sir F. Palgrave, History of Normandy and England, volume 4.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1135-1154. The miserable reign of Stephen. Civil war, anarchy and wretchedness in England. The transition to hereditary monarchy.

After the death of William the Conqueror, the English throne was occupied in succession by two of his sons, William II., or William Rufus (1087-1100), and Henry I., or Henry Beauclerk (1100-1135). The latter outlived his one legitimate son, and bequeathed the crown at his death to his daughter, Matilda, widow of the Emperor Henry V. of Germany and now wife of Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. This latter marriage had been very unpopular, both in England and Normandy, and a strong party refused to recognize the Empress Matilda, as she was commonly called. This party maintained the superior claims of the family of Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror, who had married the Earl of Blois. Naturally their choice would have fallen upon Theobald of Blois, the eldest of Adela's sons; but his more enterprising younger brother Stephen supplanted him. Hastening to England, and winning the favour of the citizens of London, Stephen secured the royal treasure and persuaded a council of peers to elect him king. A most grievous civil war ensued, which lasted for nineteen terrible years, during which long period there was anarchy and great wretchedness in England. "The land was filled with castles, and the castles with armed banditti, who seem to have carried on their extortions under colour of the military commands bestowed by Stephen on every petty castellan. Often the very belfries of churches were fortified. On the poor lay the burden of building these strongholds; the rich suffered in their donjeons. Many were starved to death, and these were the happiest. Others were flung into cellars filled with reptiles, or hung up by the thumbs till they told where their treasures were concealed, or crippled in frames which did not suffer them to move, or held just resting on the ground by sharp iron collars round the neck. The Earl of Essex used to send out spies who begged from door to door, and then reported in what houses wealth was still left; the alms-givers were presently seized and imprisoned. The towns that could no longer pay the blackmail demanded from them were burned. … Sometimes the peasants, maddened by misery, crowded to the roads that led from a field of battle, and smote down the fugitives without any distinction of sides. The bishops cursed vainly, when the very churches were burned and monks robbed. 'To till the ground was to plough the sea; the earth bare no corn, for the land was all laid waste by such deeds, and men said openly that Christ slept, and his saints. Such things, and more than we can say, suffered we nineteen winters for our sins' (A. S. Chronicle). … Many soldiers, sickened with the unnatural war, put on the white cross and sailed for a nobler battle-field in the East." As Matilda's son Henry—afterwards Henry II.—grew to manhood, the feeling in his favor gained strength and his party made head against the weak and incompetent Stephen. Finally, in 1153, peace was brought about under an agreement "that Stephen should wear the crown till his death, and Henry receive the homage of the lords and towns of the realm as heir apparent." Stephen died the next year and Henry came to the throne with little further dispute.

C. H. Pearson, History of England During the Early and Middle Ages, chapter 28.

"Stephen, as a king, was an admitted failure. I cannot, however, but view with suspicion the causes assigned to his failure by often unfriendly chroniclers. That their criticisms had some foundation it would not be possible to deny. But in the first place, had he enjoyed better fortune, we should have heard less of his incapacity, and in the second, these writers, not enjoying the same stand-point as ourselves, were, I think, somewhat inclined to mistake effects for causes. … His weakness throughout his reign … was due to two causes, each supplementing the other. {798} These were—(1) the essentially unsatisfactory character of his position, as resting, virtually, on a compact that he should be king so long only as he gave satisfaction to those who had placed him on the throne; (2) the existence of a rival claim, hanging over him from the first, like the sword of Damocles, and affording a lever by which the malcontents could compel him to adhere to the original understanding, or even to submit to further demands. … The position of his opponents throughout his reign would seem to have rested on two assumptions. The first, that a breach, on his part, of the 'contract' justified ipso facto revolt on theirs; the second, that their allegiance to the king was a purely feudal relation, and, as such, could be thrown off at any moment by performing the famous diffidatio. This essential feature of continental feudalism had been rigidly excluded by the Conqueror. He had taken advantage, as is well known, of his position as an English king, to extort an allegiance from his Norman followers more absolute than he could have claimed as their feudal lord. It was to Stephen's peculiar position that was due the introduction for a time of this pernicious principle into England. … Passing now to the other point, the existence of a rival claim, we approach a subject of great interest, the theory of the succession to the English Crown at what may be termed the crisis of transition from the principle of election (within the royal house) to that of hereditary right according to feudal rules. For the right view on this subject, we turn, as ever, to Dr. Stubbs, who, with his usual sound judgment, writes thus of the Norman period:—'The crown then continued to be elective. … But whilst the elective principle was maintained in its fulness where it was necessary or possible to maintain it, it is quite certain that the right of inheritance, and inheritance as primogeniture, was recognized as coordinate. … The measures taken by Henry I. for securing the crown to his own children, whilst they prove the acceptance of the hereditary principle, prove also the importance of strengthening it by the recognition of the elective theory.' Mr. Freeman, though writing with a strong bias in favour of the elective theory, is fully justified in his main argument, namely, that Stephen 'was no usurper in the sense in which the word is vulgarly used.' He urges, apparently with perfect truth, that Stephen's offence, in the eyes of his contemporaries, lay in his breaking his solemn oath, and not in his supplanting a rightful heir. And he aptly suggests that the wretchedness of his reign may have hastened the growth of that new belief in the divine right of the heir to the throne, which first appears under Henry II., and in the pages of William of Newburgh. So far as Stephen is concerned the case is clear enough. But we have also to consider the Empress. On what did she base her claim? I think that, as implied in Dr. Stubbs' words, she based it on a double, not a single, ground. She claimed the kingdom as King Henry's daughter ('regis Henrici filia '), but she claimed it further because the succession had been assured to her by oath ('sibi juratum') as such. It is important to observe that the oath in question can in no way be regarded in the light of an election. … The Empress and her partisans must have largely, to say the least, based their claim on her right to the throne as her father's heir, and … she and they appealed to the oath as the admission and recognition of that right, rather than as partaking in any way whatever of the character of a free election. … The sex of the Empress was the drawback to her claim. Had her brother lived, there can be little question that he would, as a matter of course, have succeeded his father at his death. Or again, had Henry II. been old enough to succeed his grandfather, he would, we may be sure, have done so. … Broadly speaking, to sum up the evidence here collected, it tends to the belief that the obsolescence of the right of election to the English crown presents considerable analogy to that of canonical election in the case of English bishoprics. In both cases a free election degenerated into a mere assent to a choice already made. We see the process of change already in full operation when Henry I. endeavours to extort beforehand from the magnates their assent to his daughter's succession, and when they subsequently complain of this attempt to dictate to them on the subject. We catch sight of it again when his daughter bases her claim to the crown, not on any free election, but on her rights as her father's heir, confirmed by the above assent. We see it, lastly, when Stephen, though owing his crown to election, claims to rule by Divine right ('Dei gratia'), and attempts to reduce that election to nothing more than a national 'assent' to his succession. Obviously, the whole question turned on whether the election was to be held first, or was to be a mere ratification of a choice already made. … In comparing Stephen with his successor the difference between their circumstances has been insufficiently allowed for. At Stephen's accession, thirty years of legal and financial oppression had rendered unpopular the power of the Crown, and had led to an impatience of official restraint which opened the path to a feudal reaction: at the accession of Henry, on the contrary, the evils of an enfeebled administration and of feudalism run mad had made all men eager for the advent of a strong king, and had prepared them to welcome the introduction of his centralizing administrative reforms. He anticipated the position of the house of Tudor at the close of the Wars of the Roses, and combined with it the advantages which Charles II. derived from the Puritan tyranny. Again, Stephen was hampered from the first by his weak position as a king on sufferance, whereas Henry came to his work unhampered by compact or concession. Lastly, Stephen was confronted throughout by a rival claimant, who formed a splendid rallying-point for all the discontent in his realm: but Henry reigned for as long as Stephen without a rival to trouble him; and when he found at length a rival in his own son, a claim far weaker than that which had threatened his predecessor seemed likely for a time to break his power as effectually as the followers of the Empress had broken that of Stephen. He may only, indeed, have owed his escape to that efficient administration which years of strength and safety had given him the time to construct. It in no way follows from these considerations that Henry was not superior to Stephen; but it does, surely, suggest itself that Stephen's disadvantages were great, and that had he enjoyed better fortune, we might have heard less of his defects."

J. H. Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, chapter. 1.

ALSO IN: Mrs. J. R. Green, Henry the Second, chapter 1.

See, also, STANDARD, BATTLE OF THE (A. D. 1137).

{799}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1154-1189. Henry II., the first of the Angevin kings (Plantagenets) and his empire.

Henry II., who came to the English throne on Stephen's death, was already, by the death of his father, Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, the head of the great house of Anjou, in France. From his father he inherited Anjou, Touraine and Maine; through his mother, Matilda, daughter of Henry I., he received the dukedom of Normandy as well as the kingdom of England; by marriage with Eleanor, of Aquitaine, or Guienne, he added to his empire the princely domain which included Gascony, Poitou, Saintonge, Perigord, Limousin, Angoumois, with claims of suzerainty over Auvergne and Toulouse. "Henry found himself at twenty-one ruler of dominions such as no king before him had ever dreamed of uniting. He was master of both sides of the English Channel, and by his alliance with his uncle, the Count of Flanders, he had command of the French coast from the Scheldt to the Pyrenees, while his claims on Toulouse would carry him to the shores of the Mediterranean. His subjects told with pride how 'his empire reached from the Arctic Ocean to the Pyrenees'; there was no monarch save the Emperor himself who ruled over such vast domains. … His aim [a few years Inter] seems to have been to rival in some sort the Empire of the West, and to reign as an over-king, with sub-kings of his various provinces, and England as one of them, around him. He was connected with all the great ruling houses. … England was forced out of her old isolation; her interest in the world without was suddenly awakened. English scholars thronged the foreign universities; English chroniclers questioned travellers, scholars, ambassadors, as to what was passing abroad.' The influence of English learning and English statecraft made itself felt all over Europe. Never, perhaps, in all the history of England was there a time when Englishmen played so great a part abroad." The king who gathered this wide, incongruous empire under his sceptre, by mere circumstances of birth and marriage, proved strangely equal, in many respects, to its greatness. "He was a foreign king who never spoke the English tongue, who lived and moved for the most part in a foreign camp, surrounded with a motley host of Brabançons and hirelings. … It was under the rule of a foreigner such as this, however, that the races of conquerors and conquered in England first learnt to feel that they were one. It was by his power that England, Scotland and Ireland were brought to some vague acknowledgement of a common suzerain lord, and the foundations laid of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It was he who abolished feudalism as a system of government, and left it little more than a system of land tenure. It was he who defined the relations established between Church and State, and decreed that in England churchman as well as baron was to be held under the Common Law. … His reforms established the judicial system whose main outlines have been preserved to our own day. It was through his 'Constitutions' and his 'Assizes' that it came to pass that over all the world the English-speaking races are governed by English and not by Roman law. It was by his genius for government that the servants of the royal household became transformed into Ministers of State. It was he who gave England a foreign policy which decided our continental relations for seven hundred years. The impress which the personality of Henry II. left upon his time meets us wherever we turn."

Mrs. J. R. Green, Henry the Second, chapters 1-2.

Henry II. and his two sons, Richard I. (Cœur de Lion), and John, are distinguished, sometimes, as the Angevin kings, or kings of the House of Anjou, and sometimes as the Plantagenets, the latter name being derived from a boyish habit ascribed to Henry's father, Count Geoffrey, of "adorning his cap with a sprig of 'plantagenista,' the broom which in early summer makes the open country of Anjou and Maine a blaze of living gold." Richard retained and ruled the great realm of his father; but John lost most of his foreign inheritance, including Normandy, and became the unwilling benefactor of England by stripping her kings of alien interests and alien powers and bending their necks to Magna Charta.

K. Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings.

ALSO IN: W. Stubbs, The Early Plantagenets.

See, also, AQUITAINE (GUIENNE): A. D. 1137-1152; IRELAND: A. D. 1169-1175.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1162-1170. Conflict of King and Church. The Constitutions of Clarendon. Murder of Archbishop Becket.

"Archbishop Theobald was at first the King's chief favourite and adviser, but his health and his influence declining, Becket [the Archdeacon of Canterbury] was found apt for business as well as amusement, and gradually became intrusted with the exercise of all the powers of the crown. … The exact time of his appointment as Chancellor has not been ascertained, the records of the transfer of the Great Seal not beginning till a subsequent reign, and old biographers being always quite careless about dates. But he certainly had this dignity soon after Henry's accession. … Becket continued Chancellor till the year 1162, without any abatement in his favour with the King, or in the power which he possessed, or in the energy he displayed, or in the splendour of his career. … In April, 1161, Archbishop Theobald died. Henry declared that Becket should succeed,—no doubt counting upon his co-operation in carrying on the policy hitherto pursued in checking the encroachments of the clergy and of the see of Rome. … The same opinion of Becket's probable conduct was generally entertained, and a cry was raised that 'the Church was in danger.' The English bishops sent a representation to Henry against the appointment, and the electors long refused to obey his mandate, saying that 'it was indecent that a man who was rather a soldier than a priest, and who had devoted himself to hunting and falconry instead of the study of the Holy Scriptures, should be placed in the chair of St. Augustine.' … The universal expectation was, that Becket would now attempt the part so successfully played by Cardinal Wolsey in a succeeding age; that, Chancellor and Archbishop, he would continue the minister and personal friend of the King; that he would study to support and extend all the prerogatives of the Crown, which he himself was to exercise; and that in the palaces of which he was now master he would live with increased magnificence and luxury. … Never was there so wonderful a transformation. Whether from a predetermined purpose, or from a sudden change of inclination, he immediately became in every respect an altered man. {800} Instead of the stately and fastidious courtier, was seen the humble and squalid penitent. Next [to] his skin he wore hair-cloth, populous with vermin; he lived upon roots, and his drink was water, rendered nauseous by an infusion of fennel. By way of further penance and mortification, he frequently inflicted stripes on his naked back. … He sent the Great Seal to Henry, in Normandy, with this short message, 'I desire that you will provide yourself with another Chancellor, as I find myself hardly sufficient for the duties of one office, and much less of two.' The fond patron, who had been so eager for his elevation, was now grievously disappointed and alarmed. … He at once saw that he had been deceived in his choice. … The grand struggle which the Church was then making was, that all churchmen should be entirely exempted from the jurisdiction of the secular courts, whatever crime they might have committed. … Henry, thinking that he had a favourable opportunity for bringing the dispute to a crisis, summoned an assembly of all the prelates at Westminster, and himself put to them this plain question: 'Whether they were willing to submit to the ancient laws and customs of the kingdom?' Their reply, framed by Becket, was: 'We are willing, saving our own order.' … The King, seeing what was comprehended in the reservation, retired with evident marks of displeasure, deprived Becket of the government of Eye and Berkhamstead, and all the appointments which he held at the pleasure of the Crown, and uttered threats as to seizing the temporalities of all the bishops, since they would not acknowledge their allegiance to him as the head of the state. The legate of Pope Alexander, dreading a breach with so powerful a prince at so unseasonable a juncture, advised Becket to submit for the moment; and he with his brethren, retracting the saving clause, absolutely promised 'to observe the laws and customs of the kingdom.' To avoid all future dispute, Henry resolved to follow up his victory by having these laws and customs, as far as the Church was concerned, reduced into a code, to be sanctioned by the legislature, and to be specifically acknowledged by all the bishops. This was the origin of the famous 'Constitutions of Clarendon.''' Becket left the kingdom (1164). Several years later he made peace with Henry and returned to Canterbury; but soon he again displeased the King, who cried in a rage, 'Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?' Four knights who were present immediately went to Canterbury, where they slew the Archbishop in the cathedral (December 29, 1170). "The government tried to justify or palliate the murder. The Archbishop of York likened Thomas à Becket to Pharaoh, who died by the Divine vengeance, as a punishment for his hardness of heart; and a proclamation was issued, forbidding anyone to speak of Thomas of Canterbury as a martyr: but the feelings of men were too strong to be checked by authority; pieces of linen which had been dipped in his blood were preserved as relics; from the time of his death it was believed that miracles were worked at his tomb; thither flocked hundreds of thousands, in spite of the most violent threats of punishment; at the end of two years he was canonised at Rome; and, till the breaking out of the Reformation, St. Thomas of Canterbury, for pilgrimages and prayers, was the most distinguished Saint in England."