For the regulation of all these revenues, and for determining all questions which concerned them, a court was appointed, upon the model of a court of the same nature, said to be of ancient use in Normandy, and called the Exchequer.

There was nothing in the government of William conceived in a greater manner, or more to be commended, than the general survey he took of his conquest.  An inquisition was made throughout the kingdom concerning the quantity of land which was contained in each county,—­the name of the deprived and the present proprietor,—­the stock of slaves, and cattle of every kind, which it contained.  All these were registered in a book, each article beginning with the king’s property, and proceeding downward, according to the rank of the proprietors, in an excellent order, by which might be known at one glance the true state of the royal revenues, the wealth, consequence, and natural connections of every person in the kingdom,—­in order to ascertain the taxes that might be imposed, and, to serve purposes in the state as well as in civil causes, to be general and uncontrollable evidence of property.  This book is called Domesday or the Judgment Book, and still remains a grand monument of the wisdom of the Conqueror,—­a work in all respects useful and worthy of a better age.

The Conqueror knew very well how much discontent must have arisen from the great revolutions which his conquest produced in all men’s property, and in the general tenor of the government.  He, therefore, as much as possible to guard against every sudden attempt, forbade any light or fire to continue in any house after a certain bell, called curfew, had sounded.  This bell rung at about eight in the evening.  There was policy in this; and it served to prevent the numberless disorders which arose from the late civil commotions.

For the same purpose of strengthening his authority, he introduced the Norman law, not only in its substance, but in all its forms, and ordered that all proceedings should be had according to that law in the French language.[74] The change wrought by the former part of this regulation could not have been very grievous; and it was partly the necessary consequence of the establishment of the new tenures, and which wanted a new law to regulate them:  in other respects the Norman institutions were not very different from the English.  But to force, against nature, a new language upon a conquered people, to make them, strangers in those courts of justice in which they were still to retain a considerable share, to be reminded, every time they had recourse to government for protection, of the slavery in which it held them,—­this is one of those acts of superfluous tyranny from which very few conquering nations or parties have forborne, though no way necessary, but often prejudicial to their safety.

[Sidenote:  A.D. 1071.]