number elsewhere rewarded the services of his brother Odo, and grants almost as large fell to William’s counsellors Fitz-Osbern and Montgomery or to barons like the Mowbrays and the Clares.  But the poorest soldier of fortune found his part in the spoil.  The meanest Norman rose to wealth and power in this new dominion of his lord.  Great or small, each manor thus granted was granted on condition of its holder’s service at the King’s call; a whole army was by this means encamped upon the soil; and William’s summons could at any hour gather an overwhelming force around his standard.

Such a force however, effective as it was against the conquered English, was hardly less formidable to the Crown itself.  When once it was established, William found himself fronted in his new realm by a feudal baronage, by the men whom he had so hardly bent to his will in Normandy, and who were as impatient of law, as jealous of the royal power, as eager for an unbridled military and judicial independence within their own manors, here as there.  The political genius of the Conqueror was shown in his appreciation of this danger and in the skill with which he met it.  Large as the estates he granted were, they were scattered over the country in such a way as to render union between the great landowners or the hereditary attachment of great areas of population to any one separate lord equally impossible.  A yet wiser measure struck at the very root of feudalism.  When the larger holdings were divided by their owners into smaller sub-tenancies, the under-tenants were bound by the same conditions of service to their lord as he to the Crown.  “Hear, my lord,” swore the vassal as kneeling bareheaded and without arms he placed his hands within those of his superior, “I become liege man of yours for life and limb and earthly regard; and I will keep faith and loyalty to you for life and death, God help me!” Then the kiss of his lord invested him with land as a “fief” to descend to him and his heirs for ever.  In other countries such a vassal owed fealty to his lord against all foes, be they king or no.  By the usage however which William enacted in England each sub-tenant, in addition to his oath of fealty to his lord, swore fealty directly to the Crown, and loyalty to the King was thus established as the supreme and universal duty of all Englishmen.

[Sidenote:  William and England]

But the Conqueror’s skill was shown not so much in these inner checks upon feudalism as in the counterbalancing forces which he provided without it.  He was not only the head of the great garrison that held England down, he was legal and elected King of the English people.  If as Conqueror he covered the country with a new military organization, as the successor of Eadward he maintained the judicial and administrative organization of the old English realm.  At the danger of a severance of the land between the greater nobles he struck a final blow by the abolition of