A history of England principally in the seventeenth century, Volume 1 (of 6)Ranke, Leopold von
History
A history of England principally in the seventeenth century, Volume 1 (of 6)
Ranke, Leopold von
England -- Civilization -- 17th century; Great Britain -- History -- Stuarts, 1603-1714
That against which the Anglo-Saxons had set themselves to guard with
all their strength during the last period, the inroad of the
Norman-French element into their Church and their State, was now
accomplished in fullest measure. William's maxim was, that all who had
taken arms against him and his right had forfeited their property;
those who escaped, and the heirs of those who had fallen, were
deprived alike. In a short time we find William's leading comrades in
the war, as earls of Hereford, Buckingham, Shrewsbury, Cornwall; his
valiant brothers were endowed with hundreds of fiefs; and when the
insurrection which quickly broke out led to new outlawries and new
confiscations, all the counties were filled with French knights. From
Caen came over the blocks of freestone to build castles and towers, by
which they hoped to bridle the towns and the country. It is an
exaggeration to assume a complete transfer of property from the one
people to the other; among the tenants in chief about half the names
are still Anglo-Saxon. At first, those who from any even accidental
cause had not actually met William in arms were left in possession of
their lands, though without hereditary right: later, after they had
conducted themselves quietly for some time, this too was given back to
them. In the next century it excited surprise that so many great
properties should have remained in the hands of the Anglo-Saxons.[20]
It would have been altogether against William's plan, to treat the
Anglo-Saxons as having no rights. He wished to appear as the rightful
successor of the Anglo-Saxon kings: by their laws he would abide, only
adding the legal usages of the Normans to those of the Danes,
Mercians, and West Saxons; and it was not merely through his will, but
also by its higher form, and connexion with the ideas of the century,
that the Norman law gained the upper hand. But however much we may
deduct from the usual exaggerations, this fact remains, that the
change of ownership which took place, like the change in the
constitution and the general state of things, was of enormous extent:
the military and judicial power passed entirely into the hands of the
victors in the war. And in the Church alterations no less
thoroughgoing ensued. Under the authority of Papal legates, the great
office-holders of the English Church, who had been opposed to the
newly arisen hierarchic system, were mercilessly deprived of their
places. The King was afterwards personally on tolerably good terms
with Stigand, the Archbishop of Canterbury, but was not inclined on
his account to oppose the Church. The archbishopric, and with it the
primacy of England, passed to the man in whom the union of the Church
authority and orthodoxy of that which we may call the especially
hierarchic century was most vividly represented, the man who had been
the chief agent in establishing the dogma of Transubstantiation, the
great teacher of Bec, Lanfranc. In most of the bishoprics and abbeys
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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