William the Conqueror [53]
over which he was set. He was the king's representative rather than merely his officer; if he was a magistrate and not a prince, he often sat in the seat of former princes, and might easily grow into a prince. And at last, at the very end of his reign, as the finishing of his work, he took the final step that made England for ever one. In 1086 every land-owner in England swore to be faithful to King William within and without England and to defend him against his enemies. The subject's duty to the King was to any duty which the vassal might owe to any inferior lord. When the King was the embodiment of national unity and orderly government, this was the greatest of all steps in the direction of both. Never did William or any other man act more distinctly as an English statesman, never did any one act tell more directly towards the later making of England, than this memorable act of the Conqueror. Here indeed is an addition which William made to the law of Edward for the truest good of the English folk. And yet no enactment has ever been more thoroughly misunderstood. Lawyer after lawyer has set down in his book that, at the assembly of Salisbury in 1086, William introduced "the feudal system." If the words "feudal system" have any meaning, the object of the law now made was to hinder any "feudal system" from coming into England. William would be king of a kingdom, head of a commonwealth, personal lord of every man in his realm, not merely, like a King of the French, external lord of princes whose subjects owed him no allegiance. This greatest monument of the Conqueror's statesmanship was carried into effect in a special assembly of the English nation gathered on the first day of August 1086 on the great plain of Salisbury. Now, perhaps for the first time, we get a distinct foreshadowing of Lords and Commons. The Witan, the great men of the realm, and "the landsitting men," the whole body of landowners, are now distinguished. The point is that William required the personal presence of every man whose personal allegiance he thought worth having. Every man in the mixed assembly, mixed indeed in race and speech, the King's own men and the men of other lords, took the oath and became the man of King William. On that day England became for ever a kingdom one and indivisible, which since that day no man has dreamed of parting asunder.
The great assembly of 1086 will come again among the events of William's later reign; it comes here as the last act of that general settlement which began in 1070. That settlement, besides its secular side, has also an ecclesiastical side of a somewhat different character. In both William's coming brought the island kingdom into a closer connexion with the continent; and brought a large displacement of Englishmen and a large promotion of strangers. But on the ecclesiastical side, though the changes were less violent, there was a more marked beginning of a new state of things. The religious missionary was more inclined to innovate than the military conqueror. Here William not only added but changed; on one point he even proclaimed that the existing law of England was bad. Certainly the religious state of England was likely to displease churchmen from the mainland. The English Church, so directly the child of the Roman, was, for that very reason, less dependent on her parent. She was a free colony, not a conquered province. The English Church too was most distinctly national; no land came so near to that ideal state of things in which the Church is the nation on its religious side. Papal authority therefore was weaker in England than elsewhere, and a less careful line was drawn between spiritual and temporal things and jurisdictions. Two friendly powers could take liberties with each other. The national assemblies dealt with ecclesiastical as well as with temporal matters; one indeed among our ancient laws blames any assembly that did otherwise. Bishop and earl sat together in the local GEMOT, to deal with many matters which, according to continental ideas, should have been
The great assembly of 1086 will come again among the events of William's later reign; it comes here as the last act of that general settlement which began in 1070. That settlement, besides its secular side, has also an ecclesiastical side of a somewhat different character. In both William's coming brought the island kingdom into a closer connexion with the continent; and brought a large displacement of Englishmen and a large promotion of strangers. But on the ecclesiastical side, though the changes were less violent, there was a more marked beginning of a new state of things. The religious missionary was more inclined to innovate than the military conqueror. Here William not only added but changed; on one point he even proclaimed that the existing law of England was bad. Certainly the religious state of England was likely to displease churchmen from the mainland. The English Church, so directly the child of the Roman, was, for that very reason, less dependent on her parent. She was a free colony, not a conquered province. The English Church too was most distinctly national; no land came so near to that ideal state of things in which the Church is the nation on its religious side. Papal authority therefore was weaker in England than elsewhere, and a less careful line was drawn between spiritual and temporal things and jurisdictions. Two friendly powers could take liberties with each other. The national assemblies dealt with ecclesiastical as well as with temporal matters; one indeed among our ancient laws blames any assembly that did otherwise. Bishop and earl sat together in the local GEMOT, to deal with many matters which, according to continental ideas, should have been