Witan could not fail to become formal; the folkland, ever growing through confiscations, ever lessening through grants, gradually came to be looked on as the land of the King, to be dealt with as he thought good.  We must not look for any change formally enacted; but in Edward’s day the notion of folkland, as the possession of the nation and not of the King, could have been only a survival, and in William’s day even the survival passed away.  The land which was practically the land of King Edward became, as a matter of course, Terra Regis, the land of King William.  That land was now enlarged by greater confiscations and lessened by greater grants than ever.  For a moment, every lay estate had been part of the land of William.  And far more than had been the land of the nation remained the land of the King, to be dealt with as he thought good.

In the tenure of land William seems to have made no formal change.  But the circumstances of his reign gave increased strength to certain tendencies which had been long afloat.  And out of them, in the next reign, the malignant genius of Randolf Flambard devised a systematic code of oppression.  Yet even in his work there is little of formal change.  There are no laws of William Rufus.  The so called feudal incidents, the claims of marriage, wardship, and the like, on the part of the lord, the ancient heriot developed into the later relief, all these things were in the germ under William, as they had been in the germ long before him.  In the hands of Randolf Flambard they stiffen into established custom; their legal acknowledgement comes from the charter of Henry the First which promises to reform their abuses.  Thus the Conqueror clearly claimed the right to interfere with the marriages of his nobles, at any rate to forbid a marriage to which he objected on grounds of policy.  Under Randolf Flambard this became a regular claim, which of course was made a means of extorting money.  Under Henry the claim is regulated and modified, but by being regulated and modified, it is legally established.

The ordinary administration of the kingdom went on under William, greatly modified by the circumstances of his reign, but hardly at all changed in outward form.  Like the kings that were before him, he “wore his crown” at the three great feasts, at Easter at Winchester, at Pentecost at Westminster, at Christmas at Gloucester.  Like the kings that were before him, he gathered together the great men of the realm, and when need was, the small men also.  Nothing seems to have been changed in the constitution or the powers of the assembly; but its spirit must have been utterly changed.  The innermost circle, earls, bishops, great officers of state and household, gradually changed from a body of Englishmen with a few strangers among them into a body of strangers among whom two or three Englishmen still kept their places.  The result of their “deep speech” with William was not likely to be other than an assent