stantiated
elements. The final unction had been given to him. He then prepared
himself to die. Anxious to catch the last words from that tongue, to the
utterances of which they had always listened with intense delight, his
followers were bending over him, when, collecting his powers for one
last effort, he said, in an indignant tone, "I have loved righteousness
and hated iniquity, and, therefore, I die in exile."

COMPLETION OF THE DOMESDAY BOOK

A.D. 1086

CHARLES KNIGHT

(When William the Conqueror had been some years established in his
English realm, he found himself confronted with a feudal baronage
largely composed of men who had gone with him from Normandy, where many
of them had reluctantly bowed to his command. They were jealous of the
royal power and eager for military and judicial independence within
their own manors. The Conqueror met this situation with the skill of
political genius. He granted large estates to the nobles, but so widely
scattered as to render union of the great land-owners and hereditary
attachment of great areas of population to separate feudal lords
impossible. He caused under-tenants to be bound to their lords by the
same conditions of service which bound the lords to the crown, to which
each sub-tenant swore direct fealty. William also strengthened his
position as king by means of a new military organization and by his
control of the judicial and administrative systems of the kingdom. By
the abolition of the four great earldoms of the realm he struck a final
blow at the ambition of the greater nobles for independent power. By
this stroke he made the shire the largest unit of local government. By
his control of the national revenues he secured a great financial power
in his own hands.

A large part of the manors were burdened with special dues to the crown,
and for the purpose of ascertaining and recording these William sent
into each county commissioners to make a survey, whose inquiries were
recorded in the _Domesday Book_, so called because its decision was
regarded as final. This book, in Norman-French, contains the results of
his survey of England made in 1085-1086, and consists of two volumes in
vellum, a large folio of three hundred and eighty-two pages, and a
quarto of four hundred and fifty pages. For a long time it was kept
under three locks in the exchequer with the King's seal, and is now kept
in the Public Record Office. In 1783 the British Government issued a