As there is nothing of more consequence in a state than the ecclesiastical establishment, there was nothing to which this vigilant prince gave more of his attention.  If he owed his own power to the influence of the clergy, it convinced him how necessary it was to prevent that engine from being employed in its turn against himself.  He observed, that, besides the influence they derived from their character, they had a vast portion of that power which always attends property.  Of about sixty thousand knights’ fees, which England was then judged to contain, twenty-eight thousand were in the hands of the clergy; and these they held discharged of all taxes, and free from every burden of civil or military service:  a constitution undoubtedly no less prejudicial to the authority of the state than detrimental to the strength of the nation, deprived of so much revenue, so many soldiers, and of numberless exertions of art and industry, which were stifled by holding a third of the soil in dead hands out of all possibility of circulation.  William in a good measure remedied these evils, but with the great offence of all the ecclesiastic orders.  At the same time that he subjected the Church lands to military service, he obliged each monastery and bishopric to the support of soldiers, in proportion to the number of knights’ fees that they possessed.  No less jealous was he of the Papal pretensions, which, having favored so long as they served him as the instruments of his ambition, he afterwards kept within very narrow bounds.  He suffered no communication with Rome but by his knowledge and approbation.  He had a bold and ambitious Pope to deal with, who yet never proceeded to extremities with nor gained one advantage over William during his whole reign,—­although he had by an express law reserved to himself a sort of right in approving the Pope chosen, by forbidding his subjects to yield obedience to any whose right the king had not acknowledged.

To form a just idea of the power and greatness of this king, it will be convenient to take a view of his revenue.  And I the rather choose to dwell a little upon this article, as nothing extends to so many objects as the public finances, and consequently nothing puts in a clearer or more decisive light the manners of the people, and the form, as well as the powers, of government at any period.

The first part of this consisted of the demesne.  The lands of the crown were, even before the Conquest, very extensive.  The forfeitures consequent to that great change had considerably increased them.  It appears from the record of Domesday, that the king retained in his own hands no fewer than fourteen hundred manors.  This alone was a royal revenue.  However, great as it really was, it has been exaggerated beyond all reason.  Ordericus Vitalis, a writer almost contemporary, asserts that this branch alone produced a thousand pounds a day,[72]—­which, valuing the pound, as it was then estimated, at a real