an army could only be maintained by a vast confiscation of
the soil, and the failure of the English risings cleared the ground for
its establishment. The greater part of the higher nobility fell in battle
or fled into exile, while the lower thegnhood either forfeited the whole
of their lands or redeemed a portion by the surrender of the rest. We see
the completeness of the confiscation in the vast estates which William
was enabled to grant to his more powerful followers. Two hundred manors
in Kent with more than an equal number elsewhere rewarded the services of
his brother Odo, and grants almost as large fell to William's counsellors
Fitz-Osbern and Montgomery or to barons like the Mowbrays and the Clares.
But the poorest soldier of fortune found his part in the spoil. The
meanest Norman rose to wealth and power in this new dominion of his lord.
Great or small, each manor thus granted was granted on condition of its
holder's service at the King's call; a whole army was by this means
encamped upon the soil; and William's summons could at any hour gather an
overwhelming force around his standard.

Such a force however, effective as it was against the conquered English,
was hardly less formidable to the Crown itself. When once it was
established, William found himself fronted in his new realm by a feudal
baronage, by the men whom he had so hardly bent to his will in Normandy,
and who were as impatient of law, as jealous of the royal power, as eager
for an unbridled military and judicial independence within their own
manors, here as there. The political genius of the Conqueror was shown in
his appreciation of this danger and in the skill with which he met it.
Large as the estates he granted were, they were scattered over the
country in such a way as to render union between the great landowners or
the hereditary attachment of great areas of population to any one
separate lord equally impossible. A yet wiser measure struck at the very
root of feudalism. When the larger holdings were divided by their owners
into smaller sub-tenancies, the under-tenants were bound by the same
conditions of service to their lord as he to the Crown. "Hear, my lord,"
swore the vassal as kneeling bareheaded and without arms he placed his
hands within those of his superior, "I become liege man of yours for life
and limb and earthly regard; and I will keep faith and loyalty to you for
life and death, God help me!" Then the kiss of his lord invested h