a kinsman of the royal house, Stephen of Albemarle, with the capture and imprisonment of its head, Robert Mowbray, the Earl of Northumberland, brought home at last to the baronage their helplessness in a strife with the King.  The genius of the Conqueror had saved England from the danger of feudalism.  But he had left as weighty a danger in the power which trod feudalism under foot.  The power of the Crown was a purely personal power, restrained under the Conqueror by his own high sense of duty, but capable of becoming a pure despotism in the hands of his son.  The nobles were at his feet, and the policy of his minister, Ranulf Flambard, loaded their estates with feudal obligations.  Each tenant was held as bound to appear if needful thrice a year at the royal court, to pay a heavy fine or rent on succession to his estate, to contribute aid in case of the king’s capture in war or the knighthood of the king’s eldest son or the marriage of his eldest daughter.  An heir who was still a minor passed into the king’s wardship, and all profit from his lands went during the period of wardship to the king.  If the estate fell to an heiress, her hand was at the king’s disposal, and was generally sold by him to the highest bidder.  These rights of “marriage” and “wardship” as well as the exaction of aids at the royal will poured wealth into the treasury while they impoverished and fettered the baronage.  A fresh source of revenue was found in the Church.  The same principles of feudal dependence were applied to its lands as to those of the nobles; and during the vacancy of a see or abbey its profits, like those of a minor, were swept into the royal hoard.  William’s profligacy and extravagance soon tempted him to abuse this resource, and so steadily did he refuse to appoint successors to prelates whom death removed that at the close of his reign one archbishoprick, four bishopricks, and eleven abbeys were found to be without pastors.

Vile as was this system of extortion and misrule but a single voice was raised in protest against it.  Lanfranc had been followed in his abbey at Bec by the most famous of his scholars, Anselm of Aosta, an Italian like himself.  Friends as they were, no two men could be more strangely unlike.  Anselm had grown to manhood in the quiet solitude of his mountain-valley, a tenderhearted poet-dreamer, with a soul pure as the Alpine snows above him, and an intelligence keen and clear as the mountain-air.  The whole temper of the man was painted in a dream of his youth.  It seemed to him as though heaven lay, a stately palace, amid the gleaming hill-peaks, while the women reaping in the corn-fields of the valley became harvest-maidens of its king.  They reaped idly, and Anselm, grieved at their sloth, hastily climbed the mountain side to accuse them to their lord.  As he reached the palace the king’s voice called him to his feet and he poured forth his tale; then at the royal bidding bread of an unearthly whiteness was set before him,