as sub-tenants. "There came to him," wrote the chronicler, "... all
the landowning men there were over all England, whose soever men they
were, and all bowed down before him and became his men, and swore
oaths of fealty to him, that they would be faithful to him against all
other men." It was this oath which marked the difference between
English and Continental feudalism, though they were now in other
respects alike. On the Continent each tenant swore to be faithful to
his lord, but only the lords who held directly from the crown swore to
be faithful to the king. The consequence was that when a lord rebelled
against the king, his tenants followed their lord and not the king. In
England the tenants swore to forsake their lord and to serve the king
against him if he forsook his duty to the king. Nor was this all. Many
men break their oaths. William, however, was strong enough in England
to punish those who broke their oaths to him, whilst the king of
France was seldom strong enough to punish those who broke their oaths
to him.

15. =William's Death. 1087.=--The oath taken at Salisbury was the
completion of William's work in England. To contemporaries he appeared
as a foreign conqueror, and often as a harsh and despotic ruler. Later
generations could recognise that his supreme merit was that he made
England one. He did not die in England. In =1087= he fought with his
lord, the king of France, Philip I. In anger at a jest of Philip's he
set fire to Mantes. As he rode amidst the burning houses his horse
shied and threw him forward on the pommel of his saddle. He was now
corpulent and the injury proved fatal. On September 9 he died. When
the body was carried to Caen for burial in the abbey of St. Stephen,
which William himself had reared, a knight stepped forward and claimed
as his own the ground in which the grave had been dug. It had been
taken, he said, by William from his father. "In the name of God," he
cried, "I forbid that the body of the robber be covered with my mould,
or that he be buried within the bounds of my inheritance." The
bystanders acknowledged the truth of his accusation, and paid the
price demanded.

CHAPTER VIII.

WILLIAM II. =1087--1100.=

LEADING DATES

Accession of William II 1087
Norman rebellion against William II. 1088
Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury 1093
The Council of Rockingh