ench and Irish territory or fighting with recalcitrant
barons, the _merchant, craft_, and _church_ "_gilds_" were creating a
great popular force, which was to accomplish more enduring conquests.

It was in the "boroughs" and in these "gilds" that the true life of the
nation consisted. It was the shopkeepers and artisans which brought
the right of free speech, and free meeting, and of equal justice across
the ages of tyranny. One freedom after another was being won, and the
battle with oppression was being fought, not by Knights and Barons, but
by the sturdy burghers and craftsmen. Silently as the coral insect,
the Anglo-Saxon was building an indestructible foundation for English
liberties.

The Conqueror had bequeathed England to his second son, William Rufus,
and {42} Normandy to his eldest son, Robert. In 1095 (eight years
after his death) commenced those extraordinary wars carried on by the
chivalry of Europe against the Saracens in the East. Robert, in order
to raise money to join the first crusade, mortgaged Normandy to his
brother, and an absorption of Western France had begun, which, by means
of conquest by arms and the more peaceful conquest by marriage, would
in fifty years extend English dominion from the Scottish border to the
Pyrenees.

William's son Henry (I.), who succeeded his older brother, William
Rufus, inherited enough of his father's administrative genius to
complete the details of government which he had outlined. He organized
the beginning of a judicial system, creating out of his secretaries and
Royal Ministers a Supreme Court, whose head bore the title of
Chancellor. He created also another tribunal, which represented the
body of royal vassals who had all hitherto been summoned together three
times a year. This "King's Court," as it was called, considered
everything relating to the revenues of the state. Its {43} meetings
were about a table with a top like a chessboard, which led to calling
the members who sat, "Barons of the Exchequer." He also wisely created
a class of lesser nobles, upon whom the old barons looked down with
scorn, but who served as a counterbalancing force against the arrogance
of an old nobility, and bridged the distance between them and the
people.

So, while the thirty-five years of Henry's reign advanced, and
developed the purposes of his father, his marriage with a Saxon
Princess did much to efface the memory of foreign conquest, in
restoring the old Saxon