Justiciar appointed.

William's riches.

His great power.

the nation, with whose counsel and consent the King discharged both legislative and judicial functions. The immense amount of business to be transacted, the frequent absence of the King in Normandy, and his ignorance of the English language, caused the appointment of a new officer of the highest dignity, the Justiciar, who represented the King in all matters, acted as regent in his absence, and at all times administered the legal and financial business of the country. The office of Chancellor, who, as official keeper of the royal seal, first appears under Eadward the Confessor (the first of our kings who had a scal), was continued; but he was subordinate to the Justiciar, heading the king's clerks or chaplains, who performed the duties of secretaries.

William was reputed to be the most opulent prince in Christendom. His daily income is circumstantially stated by Ordericus Vitalis to have been 1061 10s. 1d., a sum which seems incredible, when tested by the relative value of money then and now. Little trust can be placed in the numerical statements of early chroniclers; but there is no doubt that the Conqueror's revenue was exceptionally large, whilst his expenditure was relatively small. His armies were furnished free of cost by his military tenants, and by the old constitutional fyrd or national militia. When he thought fit to employ mercenaries, their cost was defrayed by a Danegeld levied on the whole cultivated land of the kingdom, and by billeting the troops at free quarters throughout the country.

As King of the English, feudal superior of his tenantsin-chief, and personal lord of all his subjects, William exercised a power far greater than that which any of his predecessors had ever wielded. Though the formal changes

1 In the winter of 1CS3-S4 the Conqueror levied a tax of six shillings on every hide of land, three times the rate of the old Danegeld, which, after having been abolished by Eadward the Confessor, was now revived in an aggravated form and continued as a permanent, though only occasional, source of revenue. Chron. A.-Sax. A.D. 1083; Freeman, Norm. Conq. iv. 685; Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 279.

of his rule.

which he had made in our constitution and laws were few in number, his government was practically despotic, and his administration harsh. His tyranny, says Hallam, 'dis- Harshness played less of passion or insolence than of that indifference about human suffering which distinguishes a cold and farsighted statesman.'1 It was in this spirit that to resist A.D. 1969.

a threatened invasion from Denmark he caused the whole country between the Tyne and the Humber to be laid waste, so that for some years afterwards there was not an inhabited village and hardly an inhabitant left.

The reign of the Conqueror was on the whole beneficial to the nation, which required welding together and organizing by means of a strong central government; and he himself was both a wise and from his own standpoint a just King But his stern nature and the hardness of his rule made him an object of fear to all ranks of his subjects. In the picturesque language of the AngloSaxon Chronicler: He was a very stark man and very savage; so that no man durst do anything against his will. He had earls in his bonds who had done against his will; bishops he set off their bishoprics, abbots off their abbotrics, and thegns in prison, and at last he did not spare his own brother Odo.' 'Truly in his time men had mickle suffering and very many hardships. Castles he caused to be wrought and poor men to be oppressed. He was so very stark. He took from his subjects many marks of gold and many hundred pounds of silver and that he took, some by right and some by mickle might, for very little need.' He let his lands to fine as dear as he could: then came some other and bade more than the first had given, and the King let it to him who had bade more. Then came a third and bid yet more, and the King let it into the hands of the man who bade the most. Nor did he reck how sinfully his

1 Mid. Ages, ii. 305.

Will. Malmesb. Gesta Regum, iii. s. 249.

Gregory VII. in his Epistles (Ep. vii. 33), calls William 'gemma principum ; and extols his love of justice. [Ep. iv. 18.]

reeves got money of poor men, or how many unlawful things they did. As man spake more of right law, so man did more unlaw. His rich men moaned and his poor men murmured: but he was so hard that he recked not the hatred of them all.'1

Anglo-Saxon Chron. p. 189-1ST.

THE constitutional importance of the reign of WILLIAM WILLIAM RUFUS consists mainly : (1) in the systematic elaboration RUFUS. 1057-1100. by Ranulf Flambard of the theory of the incidents of feudal tenure, and its rigid application in practice, as a fiscal expedient, to ecclesiastical and lay tenants alike; and (2) in the continued struggle between the royal and feudal powers, which caused the King to throw himself upon the support of the native English, and led to the ultimate breaking up of the baronage of the Conquest. A despot of the worst sort, William devoted himself almost entirely to his pleasures, and after the death of Archbishop Lanfranc, his ablest adviser, left nearly all the work of government to his justiciar. This great official was not, as in the Conqueror's days, a powerful baron, but a humble and clever court chaplain of congenial and compliant tastes, Ranulf Flambard, by whom the Church, the feudal vassals, Ranulf and the people, were all subjected to systematic oppression Flambard.

1 Ranulf seems to have been one of those Normans who came over to Eng land prior to the Conquest, his name appearing in Domesday (i. 51) as a small landowner in Hampshire in the reign of Eadward the Confessor. lie was afterwards in the service of Maurice, Bishop of London; and then Chaplain to William Rufus, who, after a time made him Chief Justiciar. (Ord. Vital. x. 18: Ang. Sac. i. 706.) He was subsequently made Bishop of Durham in 1099; was imprisoned in the Tower by Henry I. in September 1100, whence he escaped to Normandy in the following February; returned to England in 1107, and held his bishopric till his death in 1128.

Struggle between the royal and feudal powers.

and extortion. As justiciar, he controlled and directed the whole fiscal and judicial business of the Kingdom; and in order to supply the prodigality of the master who had raised him to this exalted position, he directed his ingenuity-like Empson and Dudley four centuries later1-to turning the feudal rights of the King and the procedure of the Courts of justice into instruments of pecuniary extortion. The feudal incidents of relief, wardship, and marriage, which, under the Conqueror, had been based on true feudal principles, and, for the most part, reasonably exacted, were now systematically organized as a method of arbitrarily taxing the tenants-in-chief, under colour of exacting a legal due. The system of extortion thus fixed upon the tenants of the King was naturally, indeed necessarily, extended by them to their sub-tenants, and in this way all holders of land by military tenure became subject to the new imposts. The fiefs of the Church were assimilated by Ranulf as far as possible to lay fiefs. Bishoprics and abbeys were purposely kept vacant for years together, during which time the King claimed, on the analogy of the wardship of a lay fief, to receive all the profits for his own use; and when at length a successor was nominated to the vacant benefice, a fine was demanded equivalent at least to the relief which would have been payable by a lay heir.

The great struggle between the royal and feudal powers, which began under the Conqueror himself in the conspiracy of Ralph Guador, Earl of Norfolk or East Anglia, and Roger of Breteuil, Earl of Herefordshire, was actively carried on under Rufus. Taking advantage of the claim of Duke Robert to the throne of England, the larger part of the barons eagerly seized the opportunity of siding with

Infra, ch. x.

2 Supra, pp. 60, 61.

3 The mesne tenant had a legal right to the assistance of his sub-tenants to meet the feudal claims of the lord paramount. Glanvill, lib. ix. c. 8: Postquam vero convenerit inter dominum et haeredem tenentis sui de rationabili relevio dando et recipiendo, poterit idem haeres rationabilia auxilia de hominibus suis inde exigere.'

Ord. Vital. viii. S; IIe desired to be the heir of every one, churchman or layman.' Chron. A.-Sax. A. D. IICO; Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 300.