. Finally, the intense inner life
towards which we have been led by the checking of our outward energies
has opened to us secrets of the invisible world which are of untold
value, of measureless promise for all future time.

We have, therefore, to trace the gradual involution of our national
life; the checking and restraining of that free development which would
assuredly have been ours, had our national life grown forward unimpeded
and uninfluenced from without, from the days when the Norse power waned.
The first great check to that free development came from the feudal
system, the principle of which was brought over by Robert FitzStephen,
Richard FitzGilbert, the De Courcys, the De Lacys, the De Berminghams
and their peers, whose coming we have recorded. They added new elements
to the old struggle of district against district, tribe against tribe,
but they added something more enduring--an idea and principle destined
almost wholly to supplant the old communal tenure which was the genius
of the native polity. The outward and visible sign of that new principle
was manifested in the rapid growth of feudal castles, with their strong
keeps, at every point of vantage gained by the Norman lords. They were
lords of the land, not leaders of the tribe, and their lordship was
fitly symbolized in the great gloomy towers of stone that everywhere
bear witness to their strength, almost untouched as they are by the
hand of time.

When the duke of the Normans overthrew the Saxon king at Hastings, he
became real owner of the soil of England. His barons and lords held
their estates from him, in return for services to be rendered to him
direct. To reward them for supporting him, first in that decisive
battle, and then in whatever contests he might engage in, they were
granted the right to tax certain tracts of country, baronies, earldoms,
or counties, according to the title they bore. This tax was exacted
first in service, then in produce, and finally in coin. It was the
penalty of conquest, the tribute of the subject Saxons and Angles.
There was no pretence of a free contract; no pretence that the baron
returned to the farmer or laborer an equal value for the tax thus
exacted. It was tribute pure and simple, with no claim to be anything
else. That system of tribute has been consecrated in the land tenure of
England, and the class enriched by that tribute, and still bearing the
territorial titles which are its hall-mark, has always been