The tenet of our law, that all the soil belongs theoretically to the king, is undoubtedly an enormous fiction, and very repugnant to the barbaric theory preserved by the Saxons, that all unappropriated land belonged to the folk, and was unalienable without its consent.[475] It was, however, but an extension of the feudal tenure to the whole kingdom, and rested on the personality of feudal homage. William established it more by his power than by any theory of lawyers; though doubtless his successors often found lawyers as ready to shape the acts of power into a theory as if they had originally projected them. And thus grew up the high schemes of prerogative, which, for many centuries, were in conflict with those of liberty. We are not able, nevertheless, to define the constitutional authority of the Saxon kings; it was not legislative, nor was that of William and his successors ever such; it was not exclusive of redress for private wrong, nor was this ever the theory of English law, though the method of remedy might not be sufficiently effective; yet it had certainly grown before the Conquest, with no help from Roman notions, to something very unlike that of the German kings in Tacitus. NOTE XIII. Page 172. The reduction of the free ceorls into villenage, especially if as general as is usually assumed, is one of the most remarkable innovations during the Anglo-Norman period; and one which, as far as our published records extend, we cannot wholly explain. Observations have been made on it by Mr. Wright, in the Archæologia (vol. xxx. p. 225). After adverting to the oppression of the peasants in Normandy, which produced several rebellions, he proceeds thus:--"These feelings of hatred and contempt for the peasantry were brought into our island by the Norman barons in the latter half of the eleventh century. The Saxon laws and customs continued; but the Normans acted as the Franks had done towards the Roman coloni; they enforced with harshness the laws which were in their own favour, and gradually threw aside, or broke through, those which were in favour of the miserable serf."