. . .Counsel was at length taken hereon, and it was decreed that what their merits might earn from their lords by a lawful covenant should be granted to them by inviolable right, but that they should claim nothing for themselves by right of heredity from the time of the conquest of the race. The wise discretion of this provision is manifest, the more so as they would thus be bound in every way in their own interests to strive henceforth to win the favour of their lords by devoted service. So, therefore, any member of the conquered people who possesses estates or any such thing, has acquired them not because they were thought to be due to him by hereditary right, but because he has gotten them by his merits or by covenant.

11

THE STATUTES OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.

Source.—Bodleian Rawlinson, C. 641, in Stubbs, Select Charters.

First, he desired that above all things one God should be worshipped throughout the whole of . . . Read More