Henry had been hunting in the New Forest when his brother William was killed, and rode at once to Winchester to secure the King’s treasure. As the rights of primogeniture had not yet been established, and he was very obviously a fitter man to be King than his brother Robert, the slight opposition offered by the treasurer was speedily overruled, and the Sunday following (August 5, 1100) he was crowned at Westminster. To secure his position, however, he found it necessary to conciliate all parties. The Church he won by the immediate filling of vacant sees, and by the recall of the exiled Anselm. William Giffard, the chancellor of Rufus, was made Bishop of Winchester; Girard of Hereford, Archbishop of York; while both Norman and Saxon laity were bound to him by a charter, by which he laid some constitutional restrictions upon the despotism established by his father. In that charter he promised to abolish all oppressive duties, and to confine his demands to his just claims as feudal lord; rendering the same agreement obligatory on his tenants towards their vassals. False coining was checked, the right of leaving personal property by will granted, and the law of King Edward, which meant the old institutions of the country, re-established. He likewise thought it well to win the heart of the people by marrying a Princess of English descent, Matilda, niece of Eadgar Ætheling, daughter of Margaret and Malcolm of Scotland. Further to show his disapproval of his brother’s policy, he arrested Ralph Flambard, who, however, found means to escape to Normandy, and was made Bishop of Lisieux. [Sidenote: His policy.] Henry had thus declared the policy he intended to pursue, the policy of his father rather than of his brother. He meant to be at once a friend and master of the Church, and a national sovereign of the English, a character which became a prince who had been born in that country. That position implied a power much more centralized than that of a feudal suzerain; and in England his chief policy was directed throughout his reign to upholding his mastery over the Church and over refractory barons who aimed at more perfect feudalism. He was in heart however a Norman, and, in pursuit of his objects, did not shrink from using his English subjects with great severity. Similarly, his chief foreign difficulties were produced by his wish to win the Duchy of Normandy, and having won it to rule it in the same masterful spirit in which he ruled England. We find then in his reign ecclesiastical disputes, disputes with the feudal barons of both England and Normandy, wars for the conquest of the duchy, and consequent complications with his suzerain the King of France. Mixed with these are stories, chiefly from Saxon sources, of cruel and unjust exactions and acts of injustice, tolerated, if not ordered, against his Saxon subjects. [Sidenote: His supporters.] [Sidenote: His opponents.]