Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The National Movement in the Reign of Henry III: And Its Culmination in the Barons' War
William the Conqueror, after his experiences with the turbulent vassals of Normandy, was not likely to neglect in the establishment of his rule in England the vantage offered by the undefined prerogative of an English king. If feudalism was introduced into Eng land by the Conquest as the result of repeated con fiscations of the estates of all who refused to recognize him as the lawful successor of Edward the Confessor, it was introduced not so much as a system of govern ment as a mode of land tenure, and the worst feature of continental feudalism was abolished by the anti feudal law1 of the Gemot of Salisbury Plain. The government of William I. And his immediate successor was practically despotic, but necessarily so; order in a government based in reality upon race-differences however disregarded in theory - could be secured only through absolutism. The world-struggle between in dividual liberty, typified in England by anglo-saxon local customs, and good order, typified by royal su premacy, had entered in England upon a new phase.2 Speaking broadly, from the accession of William I. To the loss of Normandy under John, good order was maintained by the union of crown and English people against the baronage, - but at the expense of liberty from the loss of Normandy to the reign of Edward I.
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