n loyal and prudent, the sovereign would have had no lands, save his
own private domains, to give away, nor would the industrious have been
able to become tenants-in-fee. The alterations which have taken place in
the possession of land since the composition of the Book of Doom, have
been owing to the disloyalty or extravagance of the descendants of those
then found in possession.

Notwithstanding the vast loss of life in the contests following upon the
invasion, the population of England increased from 2,150,000 in 1066,
when William landed, to 3,350,000 in 1152, when the great-grandson of
the Conqueror ascended the throne, and the first of the Plantagenets
ruled in England.

V. THE PLANTAGENETS.

Whatever doubts may exist as to the influence of the Norman Conquest
upon the mass of the people--the FREEMEN, the ceorls, and the
serfs--there can be no doubt that its effect upon the higher classes was
very great. It added to the existing FEUDALISM--the system of Baronage,
with its concomitants of castellated residences filled with armed men.
It led to frequent contests between neighboring lords, in which the
liberty and rights of the FREEMEN were imperilled. It also eventuated
in the formation of a distinct order-the peerage--and for a time the
constitutional influence of the assembled people, the FOLC-GEMOT, was
overborne.

The principal Norman chieftains were barons in their own country, and
they retained that position in England, but their holdings in both were
feudal, not hereditary. When the Crown, originally elective, became
hereditary, the barons sought to have their possessions governed by the
same rule, to remove them from the class of TERRAREGIS (FOLC-LAND), and
to convert them into chartered land. Being gifts from the monarch, he
had the right to direct the descent, and all charters which gave land
to a man and his heirs, made each of them only a tenant for life; the
possessor was bound to hand over the estate undivided to the heir, and
he could neither give, sell, nor bequeath it. The land was BENEFICIA,
just as appointments in the Church, and reverted, as they do, to the
patron to be re-granted. They were held upon military service, and the
major barons, adopting the Saxon title Earl, claimed to be PEERS of
the monarch, and were called to the councils of the state as
barons-by-tenure. In reply to a QUO WARRANTO, issued to the Earl of
Surrey, in the reign of Edward I., he asserted that his ancestor