Wills. Seventhly, he confirms the free right of bequest of personal property. If a man, through warfare or sickness, dies intestate, his wife, children, kinsfolk, and lawful men, are to dispose of his money as they may think best for his soul.[865]

Amercements. The eighth provision goes back a step further than the others. It cancels the practice of both Williams, and goes back in the most marked way to earlier times. If one of the King’s barons or other men incurred forfeiture, he should not bind himself to be at the King’s mercy, as had been done in the time of his father and brother; he should be fined a fixed amount according to custom, as was done in the days of the kings before his father.[866]

Murders. Ninthly, the King forgives all murders up to the day of his coronation. That is to say, he forgives all payments due from the hundreds according to the special law made by his father for the protection of his foreign followers.[867] For the future the payment shall be according to the law of King Eadward.[868]

The forests. Tenthly comes the one illiberal provision in the document. “By the common consent of my barons, I have kept the forests in my own hands, as my father held them.”[869] Here, where the King’s personal pleasure was concerned, we hear nothing of the law of King Eadward or of the practice of yet earlier kings.

Privilege of the knights. The eleventh clause is a remarkable one. It does not speak, like the others, of reforming abuses or of going back to the practice of some earlier time. The King, of his own free will, bestows a certain privilege on one class of his subjects. Knights who held their lands by military service are to be free, as far as their demesne lands are concerned, from all gelds and other burthens. This the King grants to them as his own gift. In return for so great a boon, he calls on them to stand ready with horses and arms for his service and the defence of his kingdom.[870] This boon seems meant for a class whom it was very important for Henry to attach to his interest, the men namely of both races who were of knightly rank but not higher. Many of them were his tenants-in-chief; those who held only of other lords were still his men by virtue of the law of Salisbury. It was his policy to strengthen both classes in opposition to the great nobles whom he knew to be disaffected to him. Effect of the provision. It may not be too much to see in this clause of Henry’s charter an important stage in the developement of an idea which is peculiar to England, the idea of the gentleman who has no pretensions to be a nobleman. Growth of the country gentry. The knights of Henry’s charter are the representatives of the thegns of Domesday, the forerunners of the country gentlemen of later times. Holding a place between the great barons and the mass of the people, and again between the greatest and the smallest of the king’s tenants-in-chief—​largely Norman by descent, but also largely English—​they were well suited to become the leaders of the people, as they worthily showed themselves in our early parliaments. Their existence and importance, as a class separate from the great barons, did much to establish that distinctive and happy feature of English political life, which spread freedom over the whole land, instead of shutting it up within a few favoured towns. The existence of the knight, as something separate from the baron, secured, not only his own freedom, but the freedom of land-owners smaller than himself. It helped to hinder the growth of the hard and fast line which in France divided the gentilhomme from the roturier. Policy of Henry towards the second order. It was part of the policy of Henry to raise particular men of this second rank, while he broke the power of the great barons of the Conquest. This clause shows that it was also his policy to strengthen and to win to his side this class as a class.

The King’s Peace. Of the other three clauses of the charter, the first two are general, the last is temporary. The twelfth clause establishes firm peace through the whole kingdom. The thirteenth expresses that mixture of old things and new which marks the time. The Law of Eadward. Henry lays down the great basis of all later English jurisprudence; “I restore to you the law of King Eadward, with those amendments which my father made with the consent of his barons.”[871] The law of Henry was to be the old law of England, traditionally called by the name of the king to whose days men looked back as to the golden age, The Conqueror’s amendments. but modified by the changes, or rather additions, which were brought in by the few genuine statutes of the Conqueror.[872] Here, as throughout, Henry sets forth his full purpose to reign as an English king, and he carefully puts forward the nature of his kingship as a strict continuation of the kingship of Eadward and of the kings before Eadward. The alleged Laws of Henry. We have seen that the collection which goes by the name of the Laws of Henry is no real code of Henry’s issuing.[873] But it breathes the spirit of this clause and of the other clauses of the charter. It shows how English, in theory at least, the government of Henry was meant to be.

Amnesty. The fifteenth and last clause is a kind of amnesty for any irregularity which might have happened during the short interregnum. Two days and parts of two other days had passed after the peace of King William—​if we may so speak of the days of unlaw—​had come to an end, and before the peace of King Henry had begun. If any man had during that time taken anything which belonged to the King or to any one else, he might restore it without any fine; if he kept it after the proclamation, he was to be heavily fined.[874]

Such was the famous charter of Henry, the document to which Stephen Langton appealed as the birthright of English freemen.[875] Witnesses to the charter. It was witnessed on the day of the crowning by the bishop who had officiated, Maurice of London, by Gundulf Bishop (of Rochester), William Bishop-elect (of Winchester), Henry Earl (of Warwick), Simon Earl (of Northampton), Walter Giffard, Robert of Montfort, Roger Bigod, and Henry of Port.[876] Such names look forward and backward. There is already a Bigod, forefather of the Earl who would neither go nor hang.[877] There is a Simon, and if the likeness of names is merely accidental, the tradition is carried back in another way when we remember that Earl Simon of Northampton was the son-in-law of Waltheof.[878] The fewness of the names may perhaps show that the coronation of Henry, celebrated as it was amidst a burst of popular joy, was but scantily attended by the great men of the realm. The whole thing was almost as sudden as the death of Eadward and the election of Harold, and it did not, like those events, happen while the Witan were actually in session. The summons, or even the news, could have gone through a very small part only of the kingdom. One would be glad to know how men heard in distant shires, in Henry’s own Yorkshire for instance, not only that the oppressor was gone, but that the new king was crowned, pledged by his oath and his seal to give his land a new time of peace and righteousness.

The new King had taken upon himself to undo the evils of his brother’s reign, to bring back the days of Eadward, to reign as an English king. One step towards the restoration of the good state was to fill the churches which his brother had sacrilegiously kept vacant. Appointments to abbeys. The see of Winchester he had filled already; he now began to fill the thirteen abbeys which Rufus had held in his hands on the day of his death. Several were filled before the year was out; two at least were filled on the very day of his coronation. Saint Eadmund’s and Ely. These were the abbey of Saint Eadmund, void by the death of its abbot Baldwin, and that of Ely, which had stood void for seven years since the death of the aged abbot Simeon.[879] The staff of Saint Eadmund was now placed in the hand of Robert, a young monk of Bec, who is described as a son, seemingly a natural son, of Earl Hugh of Chester.[880] That of Ely was given to Richard, another monk of Bec, son of Richard of Clare.[881] In these appointments and in some others we again see the need in which Henry stood of pleasing the great nobles, even at the cost of sinning against ecclesiastical rule. In the case of the appointment to Saint Eadmund’s we are distinctly told that the King’s nomination was made against the will of the monks, and a little later Anselm thought it his duty to remove both Robert and Richard from their offices. Two other prelates, appointed before any long time had passed, are of greater personal fame. Herlwin Abbot of Glastonbury. 1100–1120. The name of Herlwin of Caen, who now received the staff of Glastonbury, lives in local memory as a great builder.[882] Faricius Abbot of Abingdon. 1100–1117. And the Italian Faricius, now placed in the vacant stall of Abingdon, figures among the most renowned abbots of his house, famous amongst his other merits for his skill in the healing art. Oddly enough, his skill in this way kept him back from higher honour. Had Faricius been less cunning in leechcraft, he might have been Archbishop of Canterbury.[883]

But to undo the evils of the days of unlaw and to reign as an English king, something more was needed than to put men of Norman, or even Italian, birth in possession of English abbeys. Towards carrying out the former of these objects, Henry had a criminal to punish and a sufferer to restore. Towards carrying out the second, he had a wife to marry. These three events pretty well filled up the rest of the year. Anselm and Flambard. Henry had two bishops to deal with, who needed to be dealt with in two very different ways. They were between them the living representatives of the late rule of unright. The one was the embodiment of what its agents did, the other was the embodiment of what its victims underwent. The King had promised to put away the unrighteousnesses of his brother and of Randolf Flambard; he began by putting away their surviving author. Flambard imprisoned in the Tower. By the advice of those about him, the Bishop of Durham, the dregs of wickedness, as he is called in the vigorous words of one of our writers, was sent as a prisoner to the Tower of London.[884] This was most likely not the first case, but it is the first recorded case, in which the great fortress of the Conqueror was used as a state-prison for great and notable offenders. Randolf Flambard heads the long list of its unwilling inmates, few of whom better deserved their place there than he did. We hear nothing of any claim of ecclesiastical privilege on behalf of the man who had brought God’s Church low. Flambard was not allowed the advantage of any of the legal subtleties which his predecessor in his see had known how to play off so skilfully, and which, one would think, he could have played off more skilfully still. We do not even hear whether the Bishop of Durham was summoned before any court of any kind. The accounts read rather as if his imprisonment was simply a stretch of the royal power in answer to a popular demand. The Tower may even have been the best place for Flambard’s safety, as it was the best place for the safety of Jeffreys, as understood by Jeffreys himself.[885] The words which say that the act was done by the advice of those about the King are also worthy of notice. The King’s inner council. The King’s inner council must certainly have contained the two Beaumont brothers, the subtle Count of Meulan and the upright Earl of Warwick. It contained Roger the Bigod, more honoured in his descendants than in himself. It contained too some of Henry’s old friends from his Norman fief, Richard of Redvers and Earl Hugh of Chester. We are told that as soon as the news of the death of Rufus was known in Normandy, several of the great men who were there, specially the Earls of Chester and Shrewsbury, hastened to England to acknowledge Henry.[886] We do not find Robert of Bellême among Henry’s inner counsellors; we do find Hugh of Avranches. And to the list we may also most likely add the bishop-elect of Winchester, William Giffard, a tried court official, though one who afterwards showed that he could suffer for a principle. Roger, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury. And a man who was to be more famous than all of them, the patriarch of the long line of English Justiciars and Judges, the poor clerk who was to be presently the all-powerful Bishop Roger of Salisbury, may have already given his voice among men who were as yet so far above him in worldly place.