These great barons, who
held immediately of the crown, shared out a great part of their lands
to other foreigners, who were denominated knights or vassals, and who
paid their lord the same duty and submission in peace and war, which
he himself owed to his sovereign. The whole kingdom contained about
seven hundred chief tenants, and sixty thousand two hundred and
fifteen knights-fees [b]; and as none of the native English were
admitted into the first rank, the few who retained their landed
property were glad to be received into the second, and under the
protection of some powerful Norman, to load themselves and their
posterity with this grievous burden, for estates which they had
received free from their ancestors [c]. The small mixture of English
which entered into this civil or military fabric (for it partook of
both species) was so restrained by subordination under the foreigners,
that the Norman dominion seemed now to be fixed on the most durable
basis, and to defy all the efforts of its enemies.
[FN [b] Order. Vital. p. 523. Secretum Abbatis, apud Selden, Titles
of Honour, p. 573. Spellm. Gloss. in verbo FEODUM. Sir Robert
Cotton. [c] M. West. p. 225. M. Paris, p. 4. Bracton, lib. 1. cap.
II. num. 1. Fleta, lib i. cap. 8. n. 2.]
The better to unite the parts of the government, and to bind them into
one system, which might serve both for defence against foreigners, and
for the support of domestic tranquillity, William reduced the
ecclesiastical revenues under the same feudal law; and though he had
courted the church on his invasion and accession, he now subjected it
to services which the clergy regarded as a grievous slavery, and as
totally unbefitting their profession.
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