his lands in France. He had most difficulty with the province of Maine, which did not like his rule. His neighbour, Fulk, Count of Anjou, made plots to get it from him. There was always great enmity between the Angevins, as the people of Anjou were called, and the Normans, and we shall see the results of this enmity later on, when a king of Angevin blood came to rule over England.

William's absences in Normandy were not very good for the people of England. We have seen how the rule of Odo of Bayeux made the English discontented in the first year after the Conquest. It was worse even in 1082. Odo wished to be made Pope, and for this end he tried to get money in every possible way. He oppressed the poor and spoiled the Church. When William heard of this he was much angered. He came back to England and seized Odo with his own hands, for no other man dared lay hands upon him, because he was a bishop. He had him carried to prison at Rouen, where he stayed till the Conqueror's death.

William was too strong for all his enemies. They only struggled against him that they might gain more power each for himself, and had no common object for which all would have fought; so they could do nothing against William's power.

CHAPTER II.

WILLIAM'S GOVERNMENT.

1. ALL this time William had only one trusted friend and adviser. This was the man whom he had made ArchWilliam and bishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc, an Italian. Lanfranc. Lanfranc was one of the greatest scholars of his day, full of zeal both for religion and learning. He

had gone to live in peace away from the world at the humble monastery of Bec, in Normandy. But he was too great a man to be left quiet. The fame of his learning drew many to Bec, and a great school gathered round him, so that Bec grew rich and famous. Then William learnt to know Lanfranc, and soon saw his greatness. He saw that whilst he was as strong as a Norman, he had all the learning and cunning wisdom of an Italian. He made him his friend and adviser, and trusted him with all his plans. When he built the great Abbey of St. Stephen's at Caen, he made Lanfranc its abbot; and when, soon after the Conquest, he had to choose a new Archbishop of Canterbury, his first thought was of Lanfranc.

When William planned the Conquest of England, he spoke much of his wish to reform the English Church. The Pope encouraged his plans, for great disorder had crept into the English Church, which cared little for the words of the Pope. Stigand, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had not, they said, been rightly elected according to the rules of the Church, so William put him aside, and bade Lanfranc come to fill the office.

2. Lanfranc came to England and threw himself heart and soul into the Conqueror's work there. The two men had the same aims, and they worked together William and to bring them about. The change brought the Pope. the English Church much closer to Rome; still neither William nor Lanfranc allowed the Pope to interfere too much in English matters.

The Popes at that time were seeking to get more and more power in all the countries of Europe. They claimed greater powers for the Papacy than had ever been claimed before. This was mainly the work of one man, Hildebrand, who, after being the intimate friend and councillor of several popes, at last became Pope himself, as

Gregory VII.

He and the Conqueror were the two greatest men in Europe, and Gregory soon found that William was as strong as himself. William treated the Pope with great respect, but he meant to rule his own Church, and he would not let Gregory interfere in Church matters in England without his consent.

In all this Lanfranc agreed with William, but neither of them would allow disorder in the Church. By degrees they turned most of the English bishops out of their sees and filled up their places with Normans. Most of the new bishops were wise and good men, scholars chosen by Lanfranc for their learning and piety. Norman abbots also, were placed over many of the abbeys; but this did not work so well, for the abbeys were full of English monks, who did not like to have a foreigner set over them.

Courts of the Church.

3. The greatest change which William and Lanfranc made was that they allowed the bishops and archdeacons to hold law courts of their own, in which they might judge all cases which had to do with the clergy or the law of the Church. Before the Conquest the bishop had sat with the sheriff in the court of the shire, and had helped him to do justice. Now the bishops had courts of their own, and no longer sat in the county courts. In the bishops' courts they did justice according to the Canons-that is, the law of the Church -not by the common law of the land. This worked very well at first, when king and archbishop were of the same mind; but it had great evils, which showed themselves, as we shall see, in after-years, when the Church tried to take too much upon herself.

Lanfranc's zeal in spiritual matters gave new life to religion in England. New orders of monks were brought in, and many new monasteries were built. On all sides, too, new and beautiful churches began to rise, for the

Normans were well skilled in building. Their churches were strong and massive, with bold ornaments, and much of their work remains in England to this day. Great part of many of the English cathedrals was built by the Normans, and so were many parish churches. The finest of their churches is the great cathedral of Durham.

4. During the last eleven years of his reign William had no foe to fear in England. He kept strict peace throughout the land. It was said that in his

day a man might go through the country with

William's government.

his bosom full of gold and no one would dare to rob him ; neither did any man dare slay another, even though he had done him great evil.

5. Still the Conqueror's hand was very heavy upon the people. Love of money was the great sin laid to his charge by the men of his time, and many and

Taxation.

severe were the taxes he laid on the land. He raised the same sums as the English kings before him had raised from the royal estates; and besides this he made the people pay the Danegeld again, which Edward the Confessor had done away with.

6. The Danegeld was an old English tax which had been raised in times of danger from the attacks of the Danes. It was paid by all the holders

Danegeld.

of cultivated land for the defence of their country. William raised the tax, as it had often been raised before, when there was no question of an attack from the Danes, and he made it three times as great as it had ever been before.

But besides the old English ways of getting money William used the Norman ways too. These were feudal aids, that is moneys which the great vassals were bound to pay their lord on fixed occasions, as on the marriage of his eldest daughter and the knighting of his eldest son. The barons could only raise these moneys from the people

who depended on them and worked on their lands; and so all these heavy burdens fell upon the poor, and no class was left untaxed.

Forest laws.

7. William's great love for hunting also brought much trouble upon the people. To make a good forest to hunt in, he laid waste one of the most fertile parts of England, from Winchester to the seacoast, 17,000 acres of land. It was called the New Forest, and has kept its name till this day. He made a law that whoever killed a hart or a hind should be blinded. He forbade killing the deer and the boars,' the old English chronicle tells us he loved the tall stags as if he were their father. The rich complained and the poor murmured, but he was so stark that he recked nought of them; they must will all what the king willed, if they would live.'

8. That he might better know the state of the country, and how much money and how many men-atDomesday arms he might raise from it, William sent Book. officers to enquire into the condition of each county. They caused to come before them the chief landowners of each county and representatives from the hundreds and towns, who were called jurors, because of the solemn oath they took to speak nothing but the truth. These jurors told the names of all the manors and towns in the county; how many freemen there were and how many serfs; how much meadow, wood, and pasture, how many mills, what kinds of fisheries, and what was the value of each holding of land. All that they told was carefully written down by the king's officers, and when it was all put together the record was called the Domesday Book; for men said it was so complete that it would last till the day of doom or judgment.

We can easily see how useful the Domesday Book was to William, for it told him exactly the state of the