An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England | Page 9

larger than that of the Anglo-Saxon monarchs had been. The
old Danegeld was still collected from time to time, though under a
different name, and the king's position as landlord of the men who had
received the lands confiscated at the Conquest was utilized to obtain
additional payments.
Perhaps the greatest proof of the power and efficiency of the
government in the Norman period was the compilation of the great
body of statistics known as "Domesday Book." In 1085 King William
sent commissioners to every part of England to collect a variety of

information about the financial conditions on which estates were held,
their value, and fitness for further taxation. The information obtained
from this investigation was drawn up in order and written in two large
manuscript volumes which still exist in the Public Record Office at
London. It is a much more extensive body of information than was
collected for any other country of Europe until many centuries
afterward. Yet its statements, though detailed and exact and of great
interest from many points of view, are disappointing to the student of
history. They were obtained for the financial purposes of government,
and cannot be made to give the clear picture of the life of the people
and of the relations of different classes to one another which would be
so welcome, and which is so easily obtained from the great variety of
more private documents which came into existence a century and a half
later.
The church during this period was not relatively so conspicuous as
during Saxon times, but the number of the clergy, both secular and
regular, was very large, the bishops and abbots powerful, and the
number of monasteries and nunneries increasing. The most important
ecclesiastical change was the development of church courts. The
bishops or their representatives began to hold courts for the trial of
churchmen, the settlement of such suits as churchmen were parties to,
and the decision of cases in certain fields of law. This gave the church a
new influence, in addition to that which it held from its spiritual duties,
from its position as landlord over such extensive tracts, and from the
superior enlightenment and mental ability of its prominent officials, but
it also gave greater occasion for conflict with the civil government and
with private persons.
After the death of Henry I in 1135 a miserable period of confusion and
violence ensued. Civil war broke out between two claimants for the
crown, Stephen the grandson, and Matilda the granddaughter, of
William the Conqueror. The organization of government was allowed
to fall into disorder, and but little effort was made to collect the royal
revenue, to fulfil the newly acquired judicial duties, or to insist upon
order being preserved in the country. The nobles took opposite sides in
the contest for the crown, and made use of the weakness of government

to act as if they were themselves sovereigns over their estates and the
country adjacent to their castles with no ruler above them. Private
warfare, oppression of less powerful men, seizure of property, went on
unchecked. Every baron's castle became an independent establishment
carried on in accordance only with the unbridled will of its lord, as if
there were no law and no central authority to which he must bow. The
will of the lord was often one of reckless violence, and there was more
disorder and suffering in England than at any time since the ravages of
the Danes.
In Anglo-Saxon times, when a weak king appeared, the shire moots, or
the rulers of groups of shires, exercised the authority which the central
government had lost. In the twelfth century, when the power of the
royal government was similarly diminished through the weakness of
Stephen and the confusions of the civil war, it was a certain class of
men, the great nobles, that fell heir to the lost strength of government.
This was because of the development of feudalism during the
intervening time. The greater landholders had come to exercise over
those who held land from them certain powers which in modern times
belong to the officers of government only. A landlord could call upon
his tenants for military service to him, and for the contribution of
money for his expenses; he held a court to decide suits between one
tenant and another, and frequently to punish their crimes and
misdemeanors; in case of the death of a tenant leaving a minor heir, his
landlord became guardian and temporary holder of the land, and if
there were no heirs, the land reverted to him, not to the national
government. These relations which the great landholders held toward
their tenants, the latter, who often themselves were landlords over
whole townships or other great tracts of land with their population, held
toward their