to William’s will.  The ordinary freeman did not lose his abstract right to come and shout “Yea, yea,” to any addition that King William made to the law of King Edward.  But there would be nothing to tempt him to come, unless King William thought fit to bid him.  But once at least William did gather together, if not every freeman, at least all freeholders of the smallest account.  On one point the Conqueror had fully made up his mind; on one point he was to be a benefactor to his kingdom through all succeeding ages.  The realm of England was to be one and indivisible.  No ruler or subject in the kingdom of England should again dream that that kingdom could be split asunder.  When he offered Harold the underkingship of the realm or of some part of it, he did so doubtless only in the full conviction that the offer would be refused.  No such offer should be heard of again.  There should be no such division as had been between Cnut and Edmund, between Harthacnut and the first Harold, such as Edwin and Morkere had dreamed of in later times.  Nor should the kingdom be split asunder in that subtler way which William of all men best understood, the way in which the Frankish kingdoms, East and West, had split asunder.  He would have no dukes or earls who might become kings in all but name, each in his own duchy or earldom.  No man in his realm should be to him as he was to his overlord at Paris.  No man in his realm should plead duty towards an immediate lord as an excuse for breach of duty towards the lord of that immediate lord.  Hence William’s policy with regard to earldoms.  There was to be nothing like the great governments which had been held by Godwine, Leofric, and Siward; an Earl of the West-Saxons or the Northumbrians was too like a Duke of the Normans to be endured by one who was Duke of the Normans himself.  The earl, even of the king’s appointment, still represented the separate being of the district 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.