ll was carried out with a perfect success. For more than a
quarter of a century the land had rest. Without, the Scots were held in
friendship, the Welsh were bridled by a steady and well-planned scheme of
gradual conquest. Within, the licence of the baronage was held sternly
down, and justice secured for all. "He governed with a strong hand," says
Orderic, but the strong hand was the hand of a king, not of a tyrant.
"Great was the awe of him," writes the annalist of Peterborough. "No man
durst ill-do to another in his days. Peace he made for man and beast."
Pitiless as were the blows he aimed at the nobles who withstood him, they
were blows which his English subjects felt to be struck in their cause.
"While he mastered by policy the foremost counts and lords and the
boldest tyrants, he ever cherished and protected peaceful men and men of
religion and men of the middle class." What impressed observers most was
the unswerving, changeless temper of his rule. The stern justice, the
terrible punishments he inflicted on all who broke his laws, were parts
of a fixed system which differed widely from the capricious severity of a
mere despot. Hardly less impressive was his unvarying success. Heavy as
were the blows which destiny levelled at him, Henry bore and rose
unconquered from all. To the end of his life the proudest barons lay
bound and blinded in his prison. His hoard grew greater and greater.
Normandy, toss as she might, lay helpless at his feet to the last. In
England it was only after his death that men dared mutter what evil
things they had thought of Henry the Peace-lover, or censure the
pitilessness, the greed, and the lust which had blurred the wisdom and
splendour of his rule.

[Sidenote: Henry's Administration]

His vigorous administration carried out into detail the system of
government which the Conqueror had sketched. The vast estates which had
fallen to the crown through revolt and forfeiture were granted out to new
men dependent on royal favour. On the ruins of the great feudatories whom
he had crushed Henry built up a class of lesser nobles, whom the older
barons of the Conquest looked down on in scorn, but who were strong
enough to form a counterpoise to their influence, while they furnished
the Crown with a class of useful administrators whom Henry employed as
his sheriffs and judges. A new organization of justice and finance bound
the kingdom more tightly together in Henry's grasp. The Clerks of the
R