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feudal duties, by him first introduced into England, namely, ward, marriage, relief, and aids. By the first, the heir of every tenant, who held immediately from the Crown, during his minority was in ward for his body and his land to the king; so that he had the formation of his mind at that early and ductile age to mould to his own purposes, and the entire profits of his estate, either to augment his demean, or to gratify his dependants. And as we have already seen how many, and how vast estates, or rather princely possessions, were then held immediately of the Crown, we may comprehend how important an article this must have been.

Though the heir had attained his age before the death of his ancestor, yet the king intruded between him and his inheritance, and obliged him to redeem, or as the term then was, to relieve it. The quantity of this relief was generally pretty much at the king's discretion, and often amounted to a very great sum.

But the king's demands on his rents in chief were not yet satisfied. He had a right and interest in the marriage of heirs, both males and females, virgins and widows; and either bestowed them at pleasure on his favourites, or sold them to the best bidder. The king received for the sale of one heiress the sum of £. 20,000, or £.60,000 of our present money; and this at a period when the chief estates were much reduced. And from hence was derived a great source of revenue, if this right were sold; of influence and attachment, if bestowed.

Under the same head of feudal duties were the casual heads to knight his eldest son, and marry his eldest daughter. These duties could be paid but once, and, though not considerable, eased him in these articles of expences.

After the feudal duties, rather in the order than in point of value, was the profit which arose from the sale of justice. No man could then sue in the king's court by a common or publick right, or without paying largely for it; sometimes the third, and sometimes even half, the value of the estate or debt sued for. These presents were called oblations; and the records preceding Magna Charta, and for some time after, are full of them. And, as the king thought fit, this must have added greatly to his power, or wealth, or indeed

to both.

The fines and amercements were another branch; and this at a time when disorders abounded, and almost every disorder was punished by a fine, was a much greater article than at first could readily be imagined; especially when we consider, that there were no limitations in this point but the king's mercy, particularly in all offences relating to the forest, which were of various kinds, and very strictly enquired into. The sale of offices was not less considerable. It appears, that all offices at that time were, or might be, legally and publickly sold; that the king had many and very rich employments in his gift, and, though it may appear strange, not inferiour to, if they did not

exceed in number and consequence, those of our present establishment. At one time the great seal was sold for 3,000 marks. The office of sheriff was then very lucrative; this charge was almost always sold. Sometimes a county paid a sum to the king, that they might appoint a sheriff whom they liked; sometimes they paid as largely to prevent him from appointing a person disagreeable to them; and thus the king had often, from the same office, a double profit in refusing one candidate, and approving the other. If some offices were advantageous, others were burthensome; and the king had the right, or was at least in the unquestioned practice, of forcing his subjects to accept these employments, or to pay for their immunity; by which means he could either punish his enemies, or augment his wealth, as his avarice or his resentments prevailed.

The greatest part of the cities and trading towns were under his particular jurisdiction, and indeed in a state not far removed from slavery. On these he laid a sort of imposition at such a time, and in such a proportion, as he thought fit. This was called a tallage. If the towns did not forthwith pay the sum, at which they were rated, it was not unusual, for their punishment, to double their exaction, and to proceed in levying it by nearly the same methods, and in the same manner, now used to raise a contribution in an enemy's country.

But the Jews were a fund almost inexhaustible. They were slaves to the king in the strictest sense; insomuch that, besides the various tallages and fines extorted from them, none succeeded to the inheritance of his father without the king's license, and an heavy composition. He sometimes even made over a wealthy Jew as a provision to some of his favourites for life. They were almost the only persons, who exercised usury, and thus drew to themselves the odium and wealth of the whole kingdom; but they were only a canal, through which it passed to the royal treasury. And nothing could be more pleasing and popular than such exactions; the people rejoiced when they saw the Jews plundered, not considering, that they were a sort of agents for the Crown, who, in proportion to the heavy taxes they paid, were obliged to advance the terms, and enforce with greater severity the execution, of their usurious contracts. Through them almost the whole body of the nobility were in debt to the king; and when he thought proper to confiscate the effects of the Jews, the securities passed into his hands; and by this means he must have possessed one of the strongest and most terrible instruments of authority, that could possibly be devised, and the best calculated to keep the people in an abject and slavish dependence.

The last general head of his revenue were the customs, prisages, and other impositions upon trade. Though the revenue arising from traffick in this rude period was much limited by the then smallness of its object, this was compensated by the weight and variety of the exactions levied, by an occasional exertion of arbitrary power, or

measure spent by William's late successes, and neither of the princes choosing to risk a battle in a country where the consequences of a defeat must be so dreadful, they agreed to an accommodation, which included a pardon for Edgar Atheling on a renunciation of his title to the crown.

William on this occasion shewed, as he did on all occasions, an honourable and disinterested sense of merit by receiving Hereward to his friendship, and distinguishing him by particular favours and bounties. Malcolm, by his whole conduct, never seemed intent upon coming to extremities with William; he was satisfied with keeping this great warriour in some awe, without bringing things to a decision, that might involve his kingdom in the same calamitous fate, that had oppressed England; whilst his wisdom enabled him to reap advantages from the fortunes of the conquered, in drawing so many useful people into his dominions; and from the policy of the Conqueror, in imitating those feudal regulations, which he saw his neighbour force upon the English, and which appeared so well calculated for the defence of the kingdom. He compassed this the more easily, because the feudal policy, being the discipline of all the considerable states in Europe, appeared the masterpiece of government.

If men, who have engaged in vast designs, could ever promise themselves repose, William, after so many victories, and so many political regulations to secure the fruit of them, might now flatter himself with some hope of quiet; but disturbances were preparing for his old age from a new quarter, from whence they were less expected and less tolerable, from the Normans, his companions in victory, and from his family, which he found not less difficulty in governA. D. 1082. ing than his kingdom. Nothing but his absence from England was wanting to make the flame blaze out. The numberless pretensions, which the petty lords, his neighbours on the continent, had on each other, and on William, together with their restless disposition, and the intrigues of the French court, kept alive a constant dissension, which made the king's presence on the continent frequently necessary. The duke of Anjou had at this time actually invaded his dominions. He was obliged to pass over into Normandy with an army of 50,000 men. William, who had conquered England by the assistance of the princes on the continent, now turned against them the arms of the English, who served him with bravery and fidelity; and by their means he soon silenced all opposition, and concluded the terms of an advantageous peace. In the mean time his Norman subjects in England, inconstant, warlike, independent, fierce by nature, fiercer by their conquest, could scarcely brook that subordination, in which their safety consisted. Upon some frivolous pretences, chiefly personal* disgusts, a most dangerous conspiracy was formed; the principal men among the Normans were engaged in it; and foreign correspondence was not wanting.

* Upon occasion of a ward refused in marriage. Wright thinks

Though this conspiracy was chiefly formed and carried on by the Normans, they knew so well the use, which William, on this occasion, would not fail to make of his English subjects, that they endeavoured, as far as was consistent with secrecy, to engage several of that nation; and above all, the earl Waltheof, as the first in rank and reputation among his countrymen. Waltheof, thinking it base to engage in any cause but that of his country against his benefactor, unveils the whole design to Lanfranc, who immediately took measures for securing the chief conspirators. He dispatched messengers to inform the king of his danger, who returned without delay at the head of his forces; and by his presence, and his usual bold activity, dispersed at once the vapours of this conspiracy. The heads were punished. The rest, left under the shade of a dubious mercy, were awed into obedience. His glory was however sullied by his putting to death Waltheof, who had discovered the conspiracy; but he thought the desire the rebels had shewn of engaging him in their designs demonstrated sufficiently, that Waltheof still retained a dangerous power. For as the years, so the suspicions, of this politick prince encreased; at whose time of life generosity begins to appear no more than a splendid weakness. These troubles were hardly appeased when others began to break forth in his own family, which neither his glory, nor the terrour which held a great nation in chains, could preserve in obedience to him. To remove, in some measure, the jealousy of the court of France with regard to his invasion of England, he had promised upon his acquisition of that kingdom to invest his eldest son Robert with the duchy of Normandy. But, as his new acquisition did not seem so secure as it was great and magnificent, he was far from any thoughts of resigning his hereditary dominions, which he justly considered as a great instrument in maintaining his conquests, and a necessary retreat if he should be deprived of them by the fortune of war. So long as the state of his affairs in England appeared unsettled, Robert acquiesced in the reasonableness of this conduct; but when he saw his father established on his throne, and found himself growing old in an inglorious subjection, he began first to murmur at the injustice of the king, soon after to cabal with the Norman barons, and at the court of France, and at last openly rose in rebellion, and compelled the vassals of the dutchy to do him homage. The king was not inclined to give up to force what he had refused to reason. Unbroken with age, unwearied with so many expeditions, he passed again into Normandy, and pressed his son with the vigour of a young warrior.

A. D. 1083.

This war, which was carried on without any thing decisive for some time, ended by a very extraordinary and affecting incident. In one of those skirmishes, which were frequent according to the irregular mode of warfare in those days, William and his son Robert, alike in a forward

the feudal right of marriage not then introduced.

and adventurous courage, plunged into the thickest | of the fight, and, unknowingly, encountered each other. But Robert, superiour by fortune, or by the vigour of his youth, wounded and unhorsed the old monarch; and was just on the point of pursuing his unhappy advantage to the fatal extremity, when the well known voice of his father at once struck his ears, and suspended his arm. Blushing for his victory, and overwhelmed with the united emotions of grief, shame, and returning piety, he fell on his knees, poured out a flood of tears, and, embracing his father, besought him for pardon. The tide of nature returning strongly on both, the father in his turn embraced his son, and bathed him with his tears; whilst the combatants on either side, astonished at so unusual a spectacle, suspended the fight, applauded this striking act of filial piety and paternal tenderness, and pressed that it might become the prelude to a lasting peace. Peace was made; but entirely to the advantage of the father, who carried his son into England, to secure Normandy from the dangers to which his ambition and popularity might expose that dukedom.

That William might have peace upon no part, the Welsh and Scots took advantage of these troubles in his family to break into England; but their expeditions were rather incursions than invasions; they wasted the country, and then retired to secure their plunder. But William, always troubled, always in action, and always victorious, pursued them, and compelled them to a peace; which was not concluded but by compelling the king of Scotland, and all the princes of Wales, to do him homage. How far this homage extended with regard to Scotland, I find it difficult to determine.

Robert, who had no pleasure but in action, as soon as this war was concluded, finding, that he could not regain his father's confidence, and that he had no credit at the court of England, retired to that of France. Edgar Atheling saw likewise, that the innocence of his conduct could not make amends for the guilt of an undoubted title to the Crown; and that the Conqueror, soured by continual opposition, and suspicious through age and the experience of mankind, regarded him with an evil eye. He therefore desired leave to accompany Robert out of the kingdom, and then to make a voyage to the Holy Land: this leave was readily granted. Edgar having displayed great valour in useless acts of chivalry abroad, after the Conqueror's death returned to England, where he long lived in great tranquillity, happy in himself, beloved by all the people, and unfeared by those who held his sceptre, from his mild and inactive

virtue.

William had been so much a stranA. D. 1094. ger to repose, that it became no longer an object desirable to him. He revived his claim to the Vexin François, and some other terrritories on the confines of Normandy. This quarrel, which began between him and the king of France on political motives, was encreased into rancour and

A. D. 1087.

bitterness, first, by a boyish contest at chess between their children, which was resented, more than became wise men, by the fathers; it was further exasperated by taunts and mockeries yet less becoming their age and dignity, but which infused a mortal venom into the war. William entered first into the French territories, wantonly wasting the country, and setting fire to the towns and villages. He entered Mantes, and as usual set it on fire; but, whilst he urged his horse over the smoking ruins, and pressed forward to further havock, the beast, impatient of the hot embers, which burned his hoofs, plunged and threw his rider violently on the saddle-bow. The rim of his belly was wounded; and this wound, as William was corpulent, and in the decline of life, proved fatal. A rupture ensued, and he died at Rouen, after shewing a desire of making amends for his cruelty by restitutions to the towns he had destroyed, by alms, and endowments, the usual fruits of a late penitence, and the acknowledgments which expiring ambition pays to virtue.

There is nothing more memorable in history than the actions, fortunes, and character of this great man; whether we consider the grandeur of the plans he formed, the courage and wisdom with which they were executed, or the splendour of that success, which, adorning his youth, continued without the smallest reserve to support his age, even to the last moments of his life. He lived above seventy years, and reigned within ten years as long as he lived; sixty over his dukedom, above twenty over England; both of which he acquired or kept by his own magnanimity, with hardly any other title than he derived from his arms; so that he might be reputed, in all respects, as happy as the highest ambition, the most fully gratified, can make a man. The silent inward satisfactions of domestick happiness he neither had nor sought. He had a body suited to the character of his mind, erect, firm, large, and active; whilst to be active was a praise; a countenance stern, and which became command. Magnificent in his living, reserved in his conversation, grave in his common deportment, but relaxing with a wise facetiousness, he knew how to relieve his mind and preserve his dignity; for he never forfeited by a personal acquaintance that esteem he had acquired by his great actions. Unlearned in books, he formed his understanding by the rigid discipline of a large and complicated experience. He knew men much, and therefore generally trusted them but little; but when he knew any man to be good, he reposed in him an entire confidence, which prevented his prudence from degenerating into a vice. He had vices in his composition, and great ones; but they were the vices of a great mind ambition, the malady of every extensive genius; and avarice, the madness of the wise: one chiefly actuated his youth; the other governed his age. The vices of young and light minds, the joys of wine, and the pleasures of love, never reached his aspiring nature. The general run of

men he looked on with contempt, and treated with cruelty when they opposed him. Nor was the rigour of his mind to be softened but with the appearance of extraordinary fortitude in his enemies, which, by a sympathy congenial to his own virtues, always excited his admiration, and insured his mercy. So that there were often seen in this one man, at the same time, the extremes of a savage cruelty, and a generosity, that does honour to human nature. Religion too seemed to have a great influence on his mind from policy, or from better motives; but his religion was displayed in the regularity with which he performed its duties, not in the submission he shewed to its ministers, which was never more than what good government required. Yet his choice of a counsellor and favourite was, not according to the mode of the time, out of that order, and a choice that does honour to his memory. This was Lanfranc, a man of great learning for the times, and extraordinary piety. He owed his elevation to William; but, though always inviolably faithful, he never was the tool or flatterer of the power which raised him; and the greater freedom he shewed, the higher he rose in the confidence of his master. By mixing with the concerns of state he did not lose his religion and conscience, or make them the covers or instruments of ambition; but tempering the fierce policy of a new power by the mild lights of religion, he became a blessing to the country in which he was promoted. The English owed to the virtue of this stranger, and the influence he had on the king, the little remains of liberty they continued to enjoy; and at last such a degree of his confidence, as in some sort counterbalanced the severities of the former part of his reign.

CHAP. III.

REIGN OF WILLIAM THE SECOND, SURNAMED RUFUS.

WILLIAM had by his Queen Matilda A. D. 1087. three sons, who survived him, Robert, William, and Henry. Robert, though in an advanced age at his father's death, was even then more remarkable for those virtues, which make us entertain hopes of a young man, than for that steady prudence, which is necessary, when the short career we are to run will not allow us to make many mistakes. He had indeed a temper suitable to the genius of the time he lived in, and which therefore enabled him to make a considerable figure in the transactions which distinguished that period. He was of a sincere, open, candid nature; passionately fond of glory; ambitious without having any determinate object in view; vehement in his pursuits, but inconstant; much in war, which he understood and loved. But guiding himself both in war and peace solely by

VOL. II.

20

the impulses of an unbounded and irregular spirit, he filled the world with an equal admiration and pity of his splendid qualities and great misfor

tunes.

William was of a character very different. His views were short, his designs few, his genius narrow, and his manners brutal; full of craft, rapacious, without faith, without religion; but circumspect, steady and courageous for his ends, not for glory. These qualities secured to him that fortune, which the virtues of Robert deserved. Of Henry we shall speak hereafter. We have seen the quarrels, together with the causes of them, which embroiled the Conqueror with his eldest son Robert. Although the wound was skinned over by several temporary and palliative accommodations, it still left a soreness in the father's mind, which influenced him, by his last will, to cut off Robert from the inheritance of his English dominions. Those, he declared, he derived from his sword, and therefore he would dispose of them to that son, whose dutiful behaviour had made him the most worthy. To William therefore he left his crown; to Henry he devised his treasures: Robert possessed nothing but the dutchy, which was his birthright. William had some advantages to enforce the execution of a bequest, which was not included even in any of the modes of succession, which then were admitted. He was at the time of his father's death in England, and had an opportunity of seizing the vacant government, a thing of great moment in all disputed rights. He had also, by his presence, an opportunity of engaging some of the most considerable leading men in his interests; but his greatest strength was derived from the adherence to his cause of Lanfranc, a prelate of the greatest authority amongst the English as well as the Normans, both from the place he had held in the Conqueror's esteem, whose memory all men respected, and from his own great and excellent qualities. By the advice of this prelate the new monarch professed to be entirely governed. And as an earnest of his future reign he renounced all the rigid maxims of conquest, and swore to protect the church and the people, and to govern by St. Edward's laws, a promise extremely grateful and popular to all parties: for the Normans, finding the English passionately desirous of these laws, and only knowing, that they were in general favourable to liberty, and conducive to peace and order, became equally clamorous for their re-establishment.

A. D. 1088.

By these measures, and the weakness of those which were adopted by Robert, William established himself on his throne, and suppressed a dangerous conspiracy formed by some Norman noblemen in the interests of his brother, although it was fomented by all the art and intrigue, which his uncle Odo could put in practice, the most bold and politick man of that age.

The security he began to enjoy from this success, and the strength which government receives by merely continuing, gave room to his natural dispositions to break out in several acts of tyranny