led to the provisions of the Great Charter. What the barons, lay and spiritual, complained of from first to last, was not the feudal system that accompanied their military tenure, but the abuse of that system in the excessive demands of the crown. Mr Freeman, however, who had an equal horror of Ranulf Flambard and of the 'feudal system', did not hesitate to connect the two more closely even than Dr Stubbs, though invoking the authority of the latter in support of his extreme views. The passages to which I would invite attention, as expressing most concisely Mr Freeman's conclusions, are these: The system of military tenures, and the oppressive consequences which were held to flow from them, were a work of the days of William Rufus. If then there was any time when 'the Feudal System' could be said to be introduced into England, it was assuredly not in the days of William the Conqueror, but in the days of William the Red. It would be more accurate to say that all that we are really concerned with, that is, not an imaginary 'Feudal System', but a system of feudal land-tenures, was not introduced into England at all, but was devised on English ground by the malignant genius of the minister of Rufus.[12] As the writer's line of argument is avowedly that of Dr Stubbs, it is only necessary to consider the point of difference between them. Where his predecessor saw in Henry's charter the proof that Ranulf Flambard had abused the existing feudal system by 'excessive' and 'unlimited' demands, Mr Freeman held, and endeavoured to convince us, that he had introduced not merely abuses of the system, but the actual system itself.[13] The question virtually turns on the first clause of the charter;[14] and it will not, I think, be doubted that Dr Stubbs is right in adopting its natural meaning, namely, that the novelty introduced by Ranulf was not the _relevatio_ itself, but its abuse in 'excessive exactions'. Indeed, even Mr Freeman had virtually to admit the point.[15] If, then, the argument breaks down, if Ranulf cannot be shown to have 'devised' military tenure, how are we to bridge over the alleged chasm between the date of Domesday (1086) and that of Henry's charter (1100)? The answer is simply that the difficulty is created by the very theory I am discussing: it is based on the assumption that William I did not introduce military tenure,[16] combined with the fact that 'within thirteen years after the Conqueror's death, not only the military tenures, but the worst abuses of the military tenures, were in full force in England'.[17] But, here again, when we examine the evidence, we find that this assumption is based on the silence, or alleged silence, of Domesday Book.[18] Now no one was better aware than Mr Freeman, as an ardent student of 'the great Record', that to argue from the silence of Domesday is an error as dangerous as it is common. Speaking from a rather wide acquaintance with topographical