ritories and great privileges. In this case it was but natural that they should be the patrons of those dignities, and nominate to that power which arose from their own free bounty. Hence the bishoprics in the greatest part of Europe became in effect, whatever some few might have been in appearance, merely donative. And as the bishoprics formed so many seigniories, when the feudal establishment was completed they partook of the feudal nature, so far as they were subjects capable of it; homage and fealty were required on the part of the spiritual vassal; the king on his part gave the bishop the investiture, or livery and seisin of his temporalities, by the delivery of a ring and staff. This was the original manner of granting feudal property, and something like it is still practised in our base-courts. Pope Adrian confirmed this privilege to Charlemagne by an express grant. The clergy of that time, ignorant but inquisitive, were very ready at finding types and mysteries in every ceremony; they construed the staff into an emblem of the pastoral care, and the ring into a type of the bishop's allegorical marriage to his church, and therefore supposed them designed as emblems of a jurisdiction merely spiritual. The papal pretensions increased with the general ignorance and superstition; and, the better to support these pretensions, it was necessary at once to exalt the clergy extremely, and, by breaking off all ties between them and their natural sovereigns, to attach them wholly to the Roman see. In pursuance of this project, the pope first strictly forbade the clergy to receive investitures from laymen, or to do them homage. A council, held at Rome, entirely condemned this practice; and the condemnation was the less unpopular, because the investiture gave rise to frequent and flagrant abuses, especially in England, where the sees were on this pretence, with much scandal, long held in the king's hands; and afterwards as scandalously and publicly sold to the highest bidder. So it had been in the last reign, and so it continued in this.

Henry, though vigorously attacked, with great resolution

maintained the rights of the crown with regard to investitures, whilst he saw the emperor, who claimed a right of investing the pope himself, subdued by the thunder of the Vatican. His chief opposition was within his own kingdom. Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, a man of unblamable life and of learning for his time, but blindly attached to the rights of the church, real or supposed, refused to consecrate those who received investitures from the king. The parties appealed to Rome; Rome, unwilling either to recede from her pretensions, or to provoke a powerful monarch, gives a dubious answer. Meanwhile the contest grows hotter; Anselm is obliged to quit the kingdom, but is still inflexible at last the king, who, from the delicate situation of his affairs in the beginning of his reign, had been obliged to temporize for a long time, by his usual prudent mixture of management with force obliged the pope to a temperament, which seemed extremely judicious. The king received homage and fealty from his vassal; the investiture, as it was generally understood to relate to spiritual jurisdiction, was given up, and on this equal bottom peace was established. The secret of the pope's moderation was this:-he was at that juncture close pressed by the emperor, and it might be highly dangerous to contend with two such enemies at once; and he was much more ready to yield to Henry, who had no reciprocal demands on him, than to the emperor, who had many and just ones, and to whom he could not yield any one point without giving up an infinite number of others very material and interesting.

As the king extricated himself happily from so great an affair, so all the other difficulties of his reign only exercised without endangering him. The efforts of France in favor of the son of Robert were late, desultory, and therefore unsuccessful. That youth, endued with equal virtue and more prudence than his father, after exerting many useless acts of unfortunate bravery, fell in battle, and freed Henry from all disturbance on the side of France. The incursions of the

Welsh in this reign only gave him an opportunity of confining that people within narrower bounds. At home he was well obeyed by his subjects, abroad he dignified his family by splendid alliances. His daughter, Matilda, he married to the emperor; but his private fortunes did not flow with so even a course as his public affairs. His only son, William, with a natural daughter, and many of the flower of the young nobility, perished at sea between Normandy and England. From that fatal accident the king was never seen to smile. He sought in vain from a second marriage to provide a male successor; but when he saw all prospect of this at an end, he called a great council of his barons and prelates. His daughter Matilda, after the decease of the emperor, he had given in marriage to Geoffrey Plantagenet, count of Anjou. As she was his only remaining issue, he caused her to be acknowledged as his successor, by the great council. He enforced this acknowledgment by solernn oaths of fealty; a sanction which he weakened rather than confirmed by frequent repetition; vainly imagining that on his death any ties would bind to the respect of a succession, so little respected by himself, and by the violation of which he had procured his crown. Having taken these measures in favor of his daughter, he died in Normandy, but in a good old age, and in the thirty-sixth year of a prosperous reign.

CHAPTER V.

Reign of Stephen.

ALTHOUGH the authority of the crown had been exercised with very little restraint, during the three preceding reigns, the succession to it, or even the principles of the succession, were but ill ascertained; so that a doubt might justly have arisen, whether the crown was not in a great measure elec

tive. This uncertainty exposed the nation, at the death of every king, to all the calamities of a civil war; but it was a circumstance favorable to the designs of Stephen, earl of Bulloigne, who was son of Stephen, earl of Blois, by a daughter of the Conqueror. The late king had raised him to great employments, and enriched him by the grant of several lordships. His brother had been made bishop of Winchester; and, by adding to it the place of his chief justiciary, the king gave him an opportunity of becoming one of the richest subjects in Europe, and of extending an unlimited influence over the clergy and the people. Henry trusted, by the promotion of two persons so near him in blood, and so bound by benefits, that he had formed an impenetrable fence about the succession; but he only inspired into Stephen the design of seizing on the crown, by bringing him so near it. The opportunity was favorable. The king died abroad. Matilda was absent with her husband; and the bishop of Winchester, by his universal credit, disposed the churchmen to elect his brother, with the concurrence of the greatest part of the nobility, who forgot their oaths, and vainly hoped that a bad title would necessarily produce a good government. Stephen, in the flower of youth, bold, active, and courageous, full of generosity and a noble affability, that seemed to reproach the state and avarice of the preceding kings, was not wanting to his fortune. He seized immediately the immense treasures of Henry, and by distributing them with a judicious profusion, removed all doubts concerning his title to them. He did not spare even the royal demesne, but secured himself a vast number of adherents by involving their guilt and interest in his own. He raised a considerable army of Flemings, in order to strengthen himself against another turn of the same instability, which had raised him to the throne; and, in imitation of the measures of the late king, he concluded all by giving a charter of liberties as ample as the people at that time aspired to. This charter contained a renunciation of the forests made by his predecessor, a grant to

the ecclesiastics of a jurisdiction over their own vassals, and to the people in general an immunity from unjust tallages and exactions. It is remarkable that the oath of allegiance taken by the nobility on this occasion was conditional; it was to be observed so long as the king observed the terms of his charter; a condition which added no real security to the rights of the subject, but which proved a fruitful source of dissension, tumult, and civil violence.

The measures, which the king hitherto pursued, were dictated by sound policy; but he took another step to secure his throne, which in fact took away all its security, and at the same time brought the country to extreme misery, and to the brink of utter ruin.

At the conquest there were very few fortifications in the kingdom; William found it necessary for his security to erect several. During the struggles of the English, the Norman nobility were permitted (as in reason it could not be refused) to fortify their own houses. It was, however, still understood, that no new fortress could be erected without the king's special license. These private castles began very early to embarrass the government. The royal castles were scarcely less troublesome; for as every thing was then in tenure, the governor held his place by the tenure of castleguard; and thus, instead of a simple officer, subject to his pleasure, the king had to deal with a feudal tenant, secure against him by law, if he performed his services, and by force, if he was unwilling to perform them. Every resolution of government required a sort of civil war to put it in execution. The two last kings had taken and demolished several of these castles; but when they found the reduction of any of them difficult, their custom frequently was to erect another close by it, tower against tower, ditch against ditch; these were called malvoisins, from their purpose and situation. Thus, instead of removing, they in fact doubled the mischief. Stephen, perceiving the passion of the barons for these castles, among other popular acts in the beginning of his reign,