in 1005, was possessed of ships and their equipments, the quota, no doubt, that he was bound to furnish when the witan decided on gathering a fleet. His best ship together with armour for sixty men he left to the king, and, besides this, he gave a ship to the people of Kent, and another to the people of Wiltshire--probably to help them to bear the burden that the war laid upon them. Moreover, the Danegeld, which was originally raised for the purpose of buying peace of the Danes, and was continued as a permanent tax on every hide of cultivated land until it was abolished by the Confessor, to be reimposed in a more oppressive form by the Norman Conqueror, was paid, except in cases of special exemption, on the lands of ecclesiastics as well as of laymen. The freedom of the Church kept alive the national spirit in the evil days that followed the Conquest; it was used to restrain oppression, and the Church became the bond that united conquerors and conquered in one people. As regards the Church itself, its national character gave it independence, and in many ways it acted by itself apart from the rest of Western Christendom. From the reign of the Mercian Cenwulf to the reign of the Confessor it was virtually free from papal interference, and the Popes took little heed of what passed in England. It made saints of those who were venerated by the English people, and observed their mass-days in accordance with the decrees of the national council; it constantly used the tongue of the people in prayers and homilies; its doctrines were held and advanced with little reference to papal authority, and its rights were laid down by kings and enforced by civil officers. Isolated from the rest of Europe, England seemed to men like another world, of which the archbishop of Canterbury was pope. The isolation and strongly national character of the Church were not without danger to its well-being. To be cut off from Rome was to lose all share in the manifold and progressive life of Western Christendom. Had the Church of England retained its purely insular character, it would never have risen much above the level of the nation, nor have been able to elevate society. During the years immediately preceding the Conquest it sank with the nation. It was a period of exhaustion both in Church and State; and the time might have come when the isolation of the Church of England would have ended in a decay as complete as that of the Celtic Church. From such a danger the Church was saved by the Norman Conquest. It rested with the Conqueror and his successors to determine how far the Conquest was to lead to the fulfilment of Hildebrand's expectations, to decide whether England should become the submissive handmaid of Rome. CHAPTER V. _ROYAL SUPREMACY._