the government and law of England. The Norse invaders who had settled in Normandy had made it in a century and a half (911-1066) the best-ruled state in Europe, and the gifts for strong administration and for orderly accounting and finance which had been displayed in the duchy were to have fuller opportunities in the conquered kingdom. William the Bastard had been Duke of Normandy since 1035, and by 1047 (when he was twenty) the turbulent barons were beginning to feel his strength. Nearly twenty years of hard work in Normandy preceded the expedition to England, and in that interval William had imposed some sort of discipline upon his baronage, and had finally made peace with the Church (after a long quarrel) through the help of Lanfranc, whom he afterwards made Archbishop of Canterbury. Personally a devout Christian, he yet insisted that the Church should keep the place which he assigned to it, and in fact he secured an effective control over its policy, notably in appointments to the higher dignities. Then, too, he had developed a remarkably good financial organisation, the “Chamber” (camera), and although the duchy revenues were not particularly large, yet there was clearly the machinery ready to collect revenue energetically and to control its disposition.
THE CONQUEST AND “DOMESDAY BOOK”
Such was the position of Duke William when he undertook the desperate adventure of invading England by transporting 5,000 men and 2,500 horses across the Channel, an astonishing performance in those days. The Battle of Hastings (1066) and the death of King Harold quickly settled him upon the throne of his new kingdom. Reforms began at once. The casual “treasure” of the Anglo-Saxon kings was reorganised as an Exchequer on business lines, and was used to keep a firm hold upon the sheriffs and local government generally. As for the Church, he continued the Norman attitude of strengthening the Church internally, enriching it and maintaining its discipline (newly reformed by the great Pope Gregory VII), although at the same time restricting its political power. This strongly contrasted with the preconquest state of things when the bishops sat in all the courts and mingled ecclesiastical and secular business. William, by an ordinance,1 insisted that the bishops should not transact ecclesiastical business in the hundred courts, but should hold their own Courts Christian for the purpose; and from that day to this the Church has maintained its separate system of courts administering canon law. Church and State which had been inextricably connected in the Anglo-Saxon age henceforth were strictly separate, a policy which happened to coincide with the Church’s own ambitions as well as with William’s. His last years were absorbed in the great survey of the kingdom which is known as Domesday Book. The original two volumes together with the chest constructed for their preservation are still in the Public Record Office in London, where Domesday Book holds an honoured place as the oldest public record. Indeed, during the middle ages it was so respected that it was called simply “the record”, so great was its authority. The land was described county by county, village by village, the owners and their subtenants were listed and their holdings valued, even the farm stock was recorded, with a view to settling clearly the rights of the Crown and the taxable resources of the country. In several cases a few precious lines will summarise the customs of a county or city, and so give us an insight into the local law in force.2 Most valuable information can be extracted from it as to the state of freedom or serfdom in different parts of the country, and it is possible that the strict insistence of the Exchequer officials upon the letter of Domesday Book, and their refusal to allow it to be questioned, was the beginning of the notion of “record” as a technical thing. From this one book the idea of certain officially compiled documents being beyond question seems to have spread to the rolls of the Exchequer, and thence to the rolls of the courts of law. If this conjecture is true, then “Records” must be regarded as financial in origin, and only later becoming judicial.3
Another effect of Domesday Book was to assert the chain of feudal relationships and to assure the overlordship of the Crown. Thus the title of every piece of land in England could be expressed in the formula that A holds it of his feudal lord B, who holds of C, who holds of —— the King. This insistence of the Norman and succeeding kings that they were the undisputed lords, direct or indirect, of every piece of land in the country is of the gravest importance, for it provided a sure foundation for the growth in later times of the common law. For this and many other reasons too technical to mention here, it has been said that “If English history is to be understood, the law of Domesday Book must be mastered”.1 This opportunity of systematising the land situation enabled the Conqueror to make England the most perfectly organised feudal state in Europe, and in this sense we may say that we are indebted to him for the feudal system. But he refused to allow the great barons whose tenure intervened between him and their sub-tenants to turn their position to political advantage, and one of his last acts was to assemble a great meeting (1086) at Salisbury where came all his counsellors “and all the land-owning men of property that there were all over England, whosesoever men they were, and all bowed down to him and became his men, and swore oaths of fealty to him that they would be faithful to him against all men”2—even against their immediate lords. In this way William tried to prevent the feudal anarchy and private war against which he had struggled for so many years in Normandy.3
His work, then, was pre-eminently that of systematisation. A few great reforms there were, but his greatest contribution was the Norman spirit of clever administration and orderly government, and his own stern enforcement of royal rights. Upon this basis was the common law to be built in later days. In other respects he was content to continue the old English laws and customs, expressing his policy in a brief but stately charter which is still preserved by the City of London:4
“King William greets in friendly wise William the bishop and Gosfrith the portreeve, and all the burgesses in London, both French and English. I let you wit that I will that you two be worthy of all the laws that you were worthy of in King Edward’s day. And I will that every child be his father’s heir after his father’s day,5 and I will not endure that any man offer any wrong to you. God keep you.”
Of William II (Rufus) there is little to say except that he rashly provoked a feud with the Church, in consequence of which Archbishop Anselm suffered years of exile and “by his firmness set up a new standard of independence for the English clergy, and made the opening move in the struggle between Church and State in England”.1 At the same time, the efficient central administration was employed under the direction of the king’s principal minister, Ranulf Flambard, in converting the incidents of feudal tenure into engines of financial oppression.
CHURCH AND STATE
With the reign of Henry I (1100-1135) we come to a more important period of legal history. His first act was very significant. Just as the Conqueror had made the short promise of good government to London which we have just quoted, so his son Henry I issued a formal Charter in 1100 promising to stop the oppressive practices which his brother Rufus had introduced; then he chose as his queen Edith, who was a representative of the old English royal house, and so conciliated the English. His principal trouble (apart from a baronial revolt which was soon quelled) came from the Church which was growing anxious at the rapid rise of powerful monarchies which were apt to use the Church for political ends. Soon the issue became definite and Europe-wide in the form of the “Investiture Contest”. The Conqueror had compelled the cathedrals to elect his nominees as bishops and had himself delivered to them the emblems of spiritual as well as of temporal authority. Gregory VII as early as 1075 prohibited lay investiture, holding that the Church was independent of the State, and that no temporal ruler could confer ecclesiastical authority. A long struggle followed which on the continent took the form of the spectacular struggle between the Empire and the papacy. In England Henry I and Archbishop Anselm were subject to the moderating influence of the great canon lawyer Ivo of Chartres who devised a compromise in 1107; the King resigned his claim to invest bishops with the ring and staff (the emblems of their spiritual authority), while Anselm agreed that cathedral chapters should come to the King’s chapel and elect bishops in his presence—thus leaving room for a reasonable amount of royal influence. This wise settlement was extended to all Europe only after much bitter strife in 1122.
The
