of this roll for each province mentioned, was modelled on an uniform plan. The name of the king was placed at the head, with the list of his lands and revenues in the province; then followed the names of the chief and smaller proprietors, in the order of their military rank, and territorial wealth. The Saxons who had been spared, by special favour, in the general spoliation, were only found in the lowest ranks; for the small number of men of that race, who were still free proprietors, or tenants in their own right under the king, as the conquerors expressed it, were such only of very small estates; they were inscribed at the end of each chapter under the title of thanes of the king, or with divers qualifications of domestic offices in the household of the conqueror. The rest of the names of an Anglo-Saxon character, which are scattered here and there throughout the roll, belong to farmers of a few fractions, larger or smaller, of the estates of the Norman earls, knights, serjeants-at-arms, and bowmen.

Such is the authentic book, preserved to the present day, from which most of the instances of expropriation recorded in this narrative have been derived. This invaluable book, in which the entire conquest was registered, in order that the remembrance of it might never be effaced, was called by the Normans the Great Roll, the Royal Roll, or the Roll of Winchester, because it was kept in the treasury of Winchester cathedral. The Saxons called it by a more solemn name, the book of the last judgment, Dooms. day-book, perhaps because it contained the sentence of their irrevocable expropriation. But if this book was a warrant of dis possession to the English nation, it was no less so to some of the foreign usurpers. Their commander cunningly availed himself of it to make the numerous mutations of property operate to his advantage, and to legitimate his personal pretensions to many of the lands seized and occupied by others. He claimed proprietor. ship, by inheritance, of all that had been in the possession of Edward, the last king but one of the Anglo-Saxons, of Harold the last king, and of all Harold's family: by the same title he laid claim to all public property, and to the supreme lordship of all towns unless he had expressly alienated them, wholly or partly,

by an authenticated diploma, par lettre et saisine, as the Norman lawyers say.

In the moment of victory, at that time of brotherhood between the commander and his companions, no one had thought of the formalities of letters-patent and of seisin, and each of those to whom William had said before the battle, "What I shall take, you will take," had made himself master of his portion, but, after the conquest, the soldiers of the invasion found that the power which they had raised over the heads of the English, weighed, in part at least, heavily on their own. It was thus that William de Warrenne's rights to the lands of two free Englishmen in the county of Norfolk, was contested, because they had formerly been dependencies of a royal manor of Edward; it was the same with one of Eustace's domains, in the province of Huntingdon, and also with fifteen acres of land held by Miles Crispin, in that of Berks. An estate occupied by Engelry, in the county of Essex, was, in the words of the Great Roll, seized into the king's hands, because Engelry had not sent to give an account of his title. The king seized in the same manner all the lands to which he laid claim, and of which the holders, though Normans, could not or would not render account.

Another pretension on his part, was, that each domain which, in the Saxon times had paid to king Edward any rent or service, should, although held by a Norman, pay the same rent or the same service. This claim, founded on succession to the rights of an English king, which could not be recognised by those who had disinherited the English race, was, from the first, badly received by the conquerors. Freedom from imposts or services in money, except some voluntary contributions, appeared to them the inviolable prerogative of their victory; and they looked upon the condition of customary tax-payers as wholly confined to the conquered nation. Many resisted the claims of their commander, disdaining to bear the imposition of personal servitude for the land which they had conquered. But there were some who weakly yielded, and their concession, whether voluntary, or bought by king William, weakened the opposition of the others. Raoul

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the Courbespine refused for a long time to pay any rent for the houses that he had taken in the town of Canterbury, and Hugh de Montford for the lands that he occupied in the county of Essex. These two chiefs could indulge their haughty tempers with impunity, but the pride of men of less power and importance was sometimes severely punished. One Osbert called the Fisherman, not choosing to pay the rent that his land had formerly given to king Edward, as a dependence of his domain, was expropriated by the royal agents, and his estate offered to whoever would pay for him: Raoul Taille-bois paid, says the Great Roll, and took possession of the land as forfeited by Osbert the Fisherman.

The Norman king also endeavoured to levy on his own countrymen, in the towns and the estates in his dominions, the ancient duty established by the Saxon law. As regards the English inhabitants of these towns and estates, besides this tax, rigorously exacted under the title of local custom and often doubled or tripled, they were further subject to a casual, arbitrary, and unequal contribution, capriciously and harshly levied, which the Normans called tuille or tuillage. The Great Roll gives a lits of the king's burgesses liable to this tax, in the order of the cities, towns, and boroughs. "These are the burgesses of the king at Colchester :-Keolman, who holds one house and five acres of land; Leofwin, who holds two houses and twenty-five acres, Ulfric, Edwin, Wulfstan, Manwin,” etc. The Norman chiefs and soldiers also levied tnille on the Saxons, who had fallen to them, either in the towns, or the rural districts. This is what was called in the language of the conquerors, having a burgess, or a free Saxon; and in this sense freemen were counted by the head, sold, given, engaged, lent, or even divided into half-shares by the Normans. The Great Roll says that a certain viscount had in the town of Ipswich two Saxon burgesses, one in pledge, and the other for debts; and that king William had, by an authentic act, lent the Saxon Edwig to Raoul Taille-bois, to keep him as long as he lived.

Many quarrels amongst the conquerors for the spoil of the conquered, many invasions of Normans upon Normans, as the

roll of inquiry has it, were also registered in every corner of England. For example, William de Warrenne, in the county of Bedford, had disseized Walter Espee of half a hide, or half an acre of land, and had taken from him two horses. Elsewhere, it was Hugh de Corbon who had usurped from Roger Bigot, half of a free Englishman, that is to say five acres of land. In the county of Hants, William de la Chesnage claimed from Priot a certain piece of land, on the pretext that it belonged to the Saxon, whose possessions he had taken. This latter instance, and many others of the same nature, prove that the Normans regarded as their legitimate property all that the former proprietor might legally have claimed; and that the foreign invader, considering himself as a natural successor, made the same investigations, and instituted the same civil prosecutions, as the Saxon's heir might have done. He called upon the English inhabitants of the district, as witnesses, to attest the extent of the rights given him by his substitution in the place of the man whom he had killed or expelled. The memory of the inhabitants, disturbed by the sufferings and tumult of the conquest, often responded imperfectly to these inquiries; the Norman, also, who wished to dispute the right of his countrymen, refused to abide by the deposition of this vile populace of the vanquished nation. In this case, the only means of terminating the dispute was either a trial by single combat, or a judgment in the king's court.

The Norman terrier speaks, in many places, of unjust invasions, seizures, and claims. It is certainly a strange thing to meet with this word justice in the register of the expropriation of an entire people; and it would be impossible to understand this book, if we did not reflect, at each sentence, that in it inheritance signifies the spoliation of an Englishman, that every Englishman despoiled by a Norman is there termed the predecessor of the Norman; that for a Norman to be just is to have abstained from taking the possession of an Englishman, who had been killed, or driven out by any other Norman; and that to act otherwise is called injustice: which is proved by the following passage. "In the county of Bedford, Raoul Taille-bois has unjustly disseized Nigel of five hydes of land

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which are well known to have formed part of the inheritance of his predecessor, and part of which is still occupied by the concubine of

Nigel."

Some of the dispossessed Saxons ventured to present themselves before the Commissioners of the Inquiry to claim their rights; there were some even whose names were enrolled in the register, with terms of humble supplication, never employed by a Norman. These men declared that they were poor and wretched; and appealed to the clemency and mercy of the king. Those who, were suffered to retain some small portion of their paternal inheritance, were forced to pay for this favour by degrading and absurd services, or to receive it under the no less humiliating title of alms. In the roll, sons are said to hold the possessions of their fathers as an alms. Free women keep their fields as an alms. Another woman remains in the enjoyment of her husband's estate, on condition of feeding the king's dogs. And, lastly,

after much cringing,

a mother and son receive their ancient inheritance as

a gift, on condition of their offering up prayers daily for the soul of the king's son, Richard.

Saxons and Normans.

From the "Penny Magazine."

The Norman conquerors of England were rapidly absorbed by the conquered people: and the union of the two races took place at a period much earlier than has generally been stated by our historians. Though beaten in the field, after a long and stern struggle for their independence, and though perhaps decimated by seven dreadful years of war and carnage, the Saxons remained incomparably more numerous than their invaders, and it was considered an easier and a wiser task to concilitate them than to exterminate them. From his first coming into England, and, indeed, before his arrival, William the Conqueror had a strong