of taking from this man and giving to that, had been really carried out.  Domesday is before all things a record of the great confiscation, a record of that gradual change by which, in less than twenty years, the greater part of the land of England had been transferred from native to foreign owners.  And nothing shows like Domesday in what a formally legal fashion that transfer was carried out.  What were the principles on which it was carried out, we have already seen.  All private property in land came only from the grant of King William.  It had all passed into his hands by lawful forfeiture; he might keep it himself; he might give it back to its old owner or grant it to a new one.  So it was at the general redemption of lands; so it was whenever fresh conquests or fresh revolts threw fresh lands into the King’s hands.  The principle is so thoroughly taken for granted, that we are a little startled to find it incidentally set forth in so many words in a case of no special importance.  A priest named Robert held a single yardland in alms of the King; he became a monk in the monastery of Stow-in-Lindesey, and his yardland became the property of the house.  One hardly sees why this case should have been picked out for a solemn declaration of the general law.  Yet, as “the day on which the English redeemed their lands” is spoken of only casually in the case of a particular estate, so the principle that no man could hold lands except by the King’s grant ("Non licet terram alicui habere nisi regis concessu”) is brought in only to illustrate the wrongful dealing of Robert and the monks of Stow in the case of a very small holding indeed.

All this is a vast system of legal fictions; for William’s whole position, the whole scheme of his government, rested on a system of legal fictions.  Domesday is full of them; one might almost say that there is nothing else there.  A very attentive study of Domesday might bring out the fact that William was a foreign conqueror, and that the book itself was a record of the process by which he took the lands of the natives who had fought against him to reward the strangers who had fought for him.  But nothing of this kind appears on the surface of the record.  The great facts of the Conquest are put out of sight.  William is taken for granted, not only as the lawful king, but as the immediate successor of Edward.  The “time of King Edward” and the “time of King William” are the two times that the law knows of.  The compilers of the record are put to some curious shifts to describe the time between “the day when King Edward was alive and dead” and the day “when King William came into England.”  That coming might have been as peaceful as the coming of James the First or George the First.  The two great battles are more than once referred to, but only casually in the mention of particular persons.  A very sharp critic might guess that one of them had something to do with King William’s coming