the four great earldoms.  The shire became the largest unit of local government, and in each shire the royal nomination of sheriffs for its administration concentrated the whole executive power in the King’s hands.  The old legal constitution of the country gave him the whole judicial power, and William was jealous to retain and heighten this.  While he preserved the local courts of the hundred and the shire he strengthened the jurisdiction of the King’s Court, which seems even in the Confessor’s day to have become more and more a court of highest appeal with a right to call up all cases from any lower jurisdiction to its bar.  The control over the national revenue which had rested even in the most troubled times in the hands of the King was turned into a great financial power by the Conqueror’s system.  Over the whole face of the land a large part of the manors were burthened with special dues to the Crown:  and it was for the purpose of ascertaining and recording these that William sent into each county the commissioners whose enquiries are recorded in his Domesday Book.  A jury empannelled in each hundred declared on oath the extent and nature of each estate, the names, number, and condition of its inhabitants, its value before and after the Conquest, and the sums due from it to the Crown.  These, with the Danegeld or land-tax levied since the days of AEthelred, formed as yet the main financial resources of the Crown, and their exaction carried the royal authority in its most direct form home to every landowner.  But to these were added a revenue drawn from the old Crown domain, now largely increased by the confiscations of the Conquest, the ever-growing income from the judicial “fines” imposed by the King’s judges in the King’s courts, and the fees and redemptions paid to the Crown on the grant or renewal of every privilege or charter.  A new source of revenue was found in the Jewish traders, many of whom followed William from Normandy, and who were glad to pay freely for the royal protection which enabled them to settle in their quarters or “Jewries” in all the principal towns of England.

[Sidenote:  The Church]

William found a yet stronger check on his baronage in the organization of the Church.  Its old dependence on the royal power was strictly enforced.  Prelates were practically chosen by the King.  Homage was exacted from bishop as from baron.  No royal tenant could be excommunicated save by the King’s leave.  No synod could legislate without his previous assent and subsequent confirmation of its decrees.  No papal letters could be received within the realm save by his permission.  The King firmly repudiated the claims which were beginning to be put forward by the court of Rome.  When Gregory VII. called on him to do fealty for his kingdom the King sternly refused to admit the claim.  “Fealty I have never willed to do, nor will I do it now.  I have never promised it, nor do I find that my predecessors did it to yours.”  William’s reforms