his grant of a charter, and his marriage with Matilda, mark the new relation which this support brought about between the people and their king.  Henry’s Charter is important, not merely as a direct precedent for the Great Charter of John, but as the first limitation on the despotism established by the Conqueror and carried to such a height by his son.  The “evil customs” by which the Red King had enslaved and plundered the Church were explicitly renounced in it, the unlimited demands made by both the Conqueror and his son on the baronage exchanged for customary fees, while the rights of the people itself, though recognized more vaguely, were not forgotten.  The barons were held to do justice to their undertenants and to renounce tyrannical exactions from them, the king promising to restore order and the “law of Eadward,” the old constitution of the realm, with the changes which his father had introduced.  His marriage gave a significance to these promises which the meanest English peasant could understand.  Edith, or Matilda, was the daughter of King Malcolm of Scotland and of Margaret, the sister of Eadgar AEtheling.  She had been brought up in the nunnery of Romsey where her aunt Christina was a nun; and the veil which she had taken there formed an obstacle to her union with the King, which was only removed by the wisdom of Anselm.  While Flambard, the embodiment of the Red King’s despotism, was thrown into the Tower, the Archbishop’s recall had been one of Henry’s first acts after his accession.  Matilda appeared before his court to tell her tale in words of passionate earnestness.  She had been veiled in her childhood, she asserted, only to save her from the insults of the rude soldiery who infested the land, had flung the veil from her again and again, and had yielded at last to the unwomanly taunts, the actual blows of her aunt.  “As often as I stood in her presence,” the girl pleaded, “I wore the veil, trembling as I wore it with indignation and grief.  But as soon as I could get out of her sight I used to snatch it from my head, fling it on the ground, and trample it under foot.  That was the way, and none other, in which I was veiled.”  Anselm at once declared her free from conventual bonds, and the shout of the English multitude when he set the crown on Matilda’s brow drowned the murmur of Churchman or of baron.  The mockery of the Norman nobles, who nicknamed the king and his spouse Godric and Godgifu, was lost in the joy of the people at large.  For the first time since the Conquest an English sovereign sat on the English throne.  The blood of Cerdic and AElfred was to blend itself with that of Hrolf and the Conqueror.  Henceforth it was impossible that the two peoples should remain parted from each other; so quick indeed was their union that the very name of Norman had passed away in half a century, and at the accession of Henry’s grandson it was impossible to distinguish between the descendants of the conquerors and those of the conquered at Senlac.