the Crown; but for
the moment it told mainly in removing the bishop from his traditional
contact with the popular assembly and in effacing the memory of the
original equality of the religious with the civil power.

[Sidenote: William's death]

In any struggle with feudalism a national king, secure of the support of
the Church, and backed by the royal hoard at Winchester, stood in
different case from the merely feudal sovereigns of the Continent. The
difference of power was seen as soon as the Conquest was fairly over, and
the struggle which William had anticipated opened between the baronage
and the Crown. The wisdom of his policy in the destruction of the great
earldoms which had overshadowed the throne was shown in an attempt at
their restoration made in 1075 by Roger, the son of his minister William
Fitz-Osbern, and by the Breton, Ralf de Guader, whom the King had
rewarded for his services at Senlac with the earldom of Norfolk. The
rising was quickly suppressed, Roger thrown into prison, and Ralf driven
over sea. The intrigues of the baronage soon found another leader in
William's half-brother, the Bishop of Bayeux. Under pretence of aspiring
by arms to the papacy Bishop Odo collected money and men, but the
treasure was at once seized by the royal officers and the bishop arrested
in the midst of the court. Even at the King's bidding no officer would
venture to seize on a prelate of the Church; and it was with his own
hands that William was forced to effect his arrest. The Conqueror was as
successful against foes from without as against foes from within. The
fear of the Danes, which had so long hung like a thunder-cloud over
England, passed away before the host which William gathered in 1085 to
meet a great armament assembled by king Cnut. A mutiny dispersed the
Danish fleet, and the murder of its king removed all peril from the
north. Scotland, already humbled by William's invasion, was bridled by
the erection of a strong fortress at Newcastle-upon-Tyne; and after
penetrating with his army to the heart of Wales the King commenced its
systematic reduction by settling three of his great barons along its
frontier. It was not till his closing years that William's unvarying
success was troubled by a fresh outbreak of the Norman baronage under his
son Robert and by an attack which he was forced to meet in 1087 from
France. Its king mocked at the Conqueror's unwieldy bulk and at the
sickness which bound him to his bed at