e and
reconstitute it. Thus reformed, with the support of an ever-growing body
of King's thegns, it wrought great deeds in the days of Alfred, Edward
and Athelstan, and recovered for England security and peace. In the days
of their weaker successors, however, all the forces that England could
muster failed to keep out Sweyn and Canute, and, above all, failed to
hold the field at Hastings.

The Norman Conquest might have been expected to involve the extinction
of the English militia. For feudalism as developed by William I was
strongest on its military side, and William's main force was the levy of
his feudal tenants. But quite the contrary happened. The Norman monarchs
and their Angevin successors were, as a matter of fact, mortally afraid
of their great feudal tenants, the barons and knights through whom the
Conquest had been effected. Hence, as English kings, they assiduously
maintained and fostered Anglo-Saxon institutions, and particularly the
"fyrd," which they used as a counterpoise to the feudal levy. They even
called upon it for Continental service and took it across the Channel to
defend their French provinces.[9] Thus in 1073 it fought for William I
in Maine; in 1094 William II summoned it to Hastings for an expedition
into Normandy; in 1102 it aided Henry I to suppress the formidable
revolt of Robert of Belesme, Earl of Shrewsbury; in 1138 it drove back
the Scots at the Battle of the Standard; and in 1174 it defeated and
captured William the Lion at Alnwick. So valuable, indeed, did it prove
to be that Henry II resolved to place it upon a permanent footing and
clearly to define its position. With that view he issued in 1181 his
"Assize of Arms."

FOOTNOTE:

[9] Stubbs, W. _Select Charters_, p. 83; and _Const. Hist._, vol. i, p.
469.

III. MEDIAEVAL REGULATIONS

Into the details of the "Assize of Arms" it is unnecessary here to
enter. Are they not written in every advanced text-book of English
history? Three things, however, are to be noted. First, that the duty
and privilege of military service are still bound up with freedom; no
unfree man is to be admitted to the oath of arms. Secondly, that upon
freemen the obligation is still universal: "all burgesses and the whole
community of freemen (_tota communa liberorum hominum_) are to provide
themselves with doublets, iron skullcaps, and lances." Thirdly, that,
closely as freedom had during the centuries of feudalism become
associated with tenancy