ey derived from their character,
they had a vast portion of that power which always attends property. Of
about sixty thousand knights' fees, which England was then judged to
contain, twenty-eight thousand were in the hands of the clergy; and
these they held discharged of all taxes, and free from every burden of
civil or military service: a constitution undoubtedly no less
prejudicial to the authority of the state than detrimental to the
strength of the nation, deprived of so much revenue, so many soldiers,
and of numberless exertions of art and industry, which were stifled by
holding a third of the soil in dead hands out of all possibility of
circulation. William in a good measure remedied these evils, but with
the great offence of all the ecclesiastic orders. At the same time that
he subjected the Church lands to military service, he obliged each
monastery and bishopric to the support of soldiers, in proportion to the
number of knights' fees that they possessed. No less jealous was he of
the Papal pretensions, which, having favored so long as they served him
as the instruments of his ambition, he afterwards kept within very
narrow bounds. He suffered no communication with Rome but by his
knowledge and approbation. He had a bold and ambitious Pope to deal
with, who yet never proceeded to extremities with nor gained one
advantage over William during his whole reign,--although he had by an
express law reserved to himself a sort of right in approving the Pope
chosen, by forbidding his subjects to yield obedience to any whose right
the king had not acknowledged.

To form a just idea of the power and greatness of this king, it will be
convenient to take a view of his revenue. And I the rather choose to
dwell a little upon this article, as nothing extends to so many objects
as the public finances, and consequently nothing puts in a clearer or
more decisive light the manners of the people, and the form, as well as
the powers, of government at any period.

The first part of this consisted of the demesne. The lands of the crown
were, even before the Conquest, very extensive. The forfeitures
consequent to that great change had considerably increased them. It
appears from the record of Domesday, that the king retained in his own
hands no fewer than fourteen hundred manors. This alone was a royal
revenue. However, great as it really was, it has been exaggerated beyond
all reason. Ordericus Vitalis, a writer almost contemporary, as