only tended to tighten this hold of the Crown on the clergy.  Stigand was deposed; and the elevation of Lanfranc to the see of Canterbury was followed by the removal of most of the English prelates and by the appointment of Norman ecclesiastics in their place.  The new archbishop did much to restore discipline, and William’s own efforts were no doubt partly directed by a real desire for the religious improvement of his realm.  But the foreign origin of the new prelates cut them off from the flocks they ruled and bound them firmly to the foreign throne; while their independent position was lessened by a change which seemed intended to preserve it.  Ecclesiastical cases had till now been decided, like civil cases, in shire or hundred-court, where the bishop sate side by side with ealdorman or sheriff.  They were now withdrawn from it to the separate court of the bishop.  The change was pregnant with future trouble to the Crown; but for the moment it told mainly in removing the bishop from his traditional contact with the popular assembly and in effacing the memory of the original equality of the religious with the civil power.

[Sidenote:  William’s death]

In any struggle with feudalism a national king, secure of the support of the Church, and backed by the royal hoard at Winchester, stood in different case from the merely feudal sovereigns of the Continent.  The difference of power was seen as soon as the Conquest was fairly over, and the struggle which William had anticipated opened between the baronage and the Crown.  The wisdom of his policy in the destruction of the great earldoms which had overshadowed the throne was shown in an attempt at their restoration made in 1075 by Roger, the son of his minister William Fitz-Osbern, and by the Breton, Ralf de Guader, whom the King had rewarded for his services at Senlac with the earldom of Norfolk.  The rising was quickly suppressed, Roger thrown into prison, and Ralf driven over sea.  The intrigues of the baronage soon found another leader in William’s half-brother, the Bishop of Bayeux.  Under pretence of aspiring by arms to the papacy Bishop Odo collected money and men, but the treasure was at once seized by the royal officers and the bishop arrested in the midst of the court.  Even at the King’s bidding no officer would venture to seize on a prelate of the Church; and it was with his own hands that William was forced to effect his arrest.  The Conqueror was as successful against foes from without as against foes from within.  The fear of the Danes, which had so long hung like a thunder-cloud over England, passed away before the host which William gathered in 1085 to meet a great armament assembled by king Cnut.  A mutiny dispersed the Danish fleet, and the murder of its king removed all peril from the north.  Scotland, already humbled by William’s invasion, was bridled by the erection of a strong fortress at Newcastle-upon-Tyne; and after penetrating with his army to the heart of Wales the King commenced