The Evolution of an Empire | Page 7

crowning of Harold; not so much at the loss of the throne, as at the
treachery of his friend.
[Sidenote: Norman Conquest, 1066. Death of King Harold.]
In the face of tremendous opposition and difficulties, he got together
his reluctant Barons and a motley host, actually cutting down the trees
with which to create a fleet, and then, depending upon pillage for
subsistence, rushed to face victory or ruin.
The Battle of Senlac (or Hastings) has been best told by a woman's
hand in the famous Bayeux Tapestry. An arrow pierced the unhappy
Harold in the eye, entering the brain, and the head which had worn the
crown of England ten short months lay in the dust, William, with wrath

unappeased, refusing him burial.
[Sidenote: William I., King of England, 1066]
William, Duke of Normandy, was King of England. Not alone that. He
claimed that he had been rightful King ever since the death of his
cousin Edward the Confessor; and that those who had supported Harold
were traitors, and their lands confiscated to the crown. As nearly all had
been loyal to Harold, the result was that most of the wealth of the
Nation was emptied into William's lap, not by right of conquest, but by
English law.
Feudalism had been gradually stifling old English freedom, and the
King saw himself confronted with a feudal baronage, nobles claiming
hereditary, military, and judicial power independent of the King, such
as degraded the Monarchy and riveted down the people in France for
centuries. With the genius of the born ruler and conqueror, William
discerned the danger, and its remedy. Availing himself of the early
legal constitution of England, he placed justice in the old local courts of
the "hundred" and "shire," to which every freeman had access, and
these courts he placed under the jurisdiction of the King alone. In
Germany and France the vassal owned supreme fealty to his _lord_,
against all foes, even the King himself. In England, the tenant from this
time swore direct fealty to none save his King.
With the unbounded wealth at his disposal, William granted enormous
estates to his followers upon condition of military service at his call. In
other words, he seized the entire landed property of the State, and then
used it to buy the allegiance of the people. By this means the whole
Nation was at his command as an army subject to his will; and there
was at the same time a breaking up of old feudal tyrannies by a
redistribution of the soil under a new form of land tenure.
The City of London was rewarded for instant submission by a Charter,
signed,--not by his name--but his mark, for the Conqueror of England
(from whom Victoria is twenty-fifth remove in descent), could not
write his name.
He built the Tower of London, to hold the City in restraint. Fortress,
palace, prison, it stands to-day the grim progenitor of the Castles and
Strongholds which soon frowned from every height in England.
He took the outlawed despised Jew under his protection. Not as a
philanthropist, but seeing in him a being who was always accumulating

wealth, which could in any emergency be wrung from him by torture, if
milder measures failed. Their hoarded treasure flowed into the land.
They built the first stone houses, and domestic architecture was created.
Jewish gold built Castles and Cathedrals, and awoke the slumbering
sense of beauty. Through their connection with the Jews in Spain and
the East, knowledge of the physical sciences also streamed into the land,
and an intellectual life was revived, which bore fruit a century and a
half later in Roger Bacon.
[Sidenote: "Domesday Book." Meeting at Salisbury Plain. 1036]
All these things were not done in a day. It was twenty years after the
Conquest that William ordered a survey and valuation of all the land,
which was recorded in what was known as "Domesday Book," that he
might know the precise financial resources of his kingdom, and what
was due him on the confiscated estates. Then he summoned all the
nobles and large landholders to meet him at Salisbury Plain, and those
shapeless blocks at "Stonehenge" witnessed a strange scene when
60,000 men there took solemn oath to support William as King even
against their own lords. With this splendid consummation his work
was practically finished. He had, with supreme dexterity and wisdom,
blended two Civilizations, had at the right moment curbed the
destructive element in feudalism, and had secured to the Englishman
free access to the surface for all time. Thus the old English freedom
was in fact restored by the Norman Conquest, by direct act of the
Conqueror.
William typified in his person a transitional time, the old Norse world,
mingling strangely in him with the new. He was the