m the English ranks. The failure of a later conspiracy whose aim was
to set on the throne a kinsman of the royal house, Stephen of Albemarle,
with the capture and imprisonment of its head, Robert Mowbray, the Earl
of Northumberland, brought home at last to the baronage their
helplessness in a strife with the King. The genius of the Conqueror had
saved England from the danger of feudalism. But he had left as weighty a
danger in the power which trod feudalism under foot. The power of the
Crown was a purely personal power, restrained under the Conqueror by his
own high sense of duty, but capable of becoming a pure despotism in the
hands of his son. The nobles were at his feet, and the policy of his
minister, Ranulf Flambard, loaded their estates with feudal obligations.
Each tenant was held as bound to appear if needful thrice a year at the
royal court, to pay a heavy fine or rent on succession to his estate, to
contribute aid in case of the king's capture in war or the knighthood of
the king's eldest son or the marriage of his eldest daughter. An heir who
was still a minor passed into the king's wardship, and all profit from
his lands went during the period of wardship to the king. If the estate
fell to an heiress, her hand was at the king's disposal, and was
generally sold by him to the highest bidder. These rights of "marriage"
and "wardship" as well as the exaction of aids at the royal will poured
wealth into the treasury while they impoverished and fettered the
baronage. A fresh source of revenue was found in the Church. The same
principles of feudal dependence were applied to its lands as to those of
the nobles; and during the vacancy of a see or abbey its profits, like
those of a minor, were swept into the royal hoard. William's profligacy
and extravagance soon tempted him to abuse this resource, and so steadily
did he refuse to appoint successors to prelates whom death removed that
at the close of his reign one archbishoprick, four bishopricks, and
eleven abbeys were found to be without pastors.

Vile as was this system of extortion and misrule but a single voice was
raised in protest against it. Lanfranc had been followed in his abbey at
Bec by the most famous of his scholars, Anselm of Aosta, an Italian like
himself. Friends as they were, no two men could be more strangely unlike.
Anselm had grown to manhood in the quiet solitude of his mountain-valley,
a tenderhearted poet-dreamer, with a soul pure as the Alpine s