An ecclesiastical historian whose childhood and early youth fell in William's reign, and who was deeply impressed with the strong control under which he held the Church, has recorded three rules to govern the relation between Church and State, which he says were established by William.[8] These are: 1, that no one should be recognized as pope in England except at his command, nor any papal letters received without his permission; 2, that no acts of the national councils should be binding without his sanction; 3, that none of his barons or servants should be excommunicated, even for crimes committed, without his consent. Whether these were consciously formulated rules or merely generalizations from his conduct, they state correctly the principles of his action, and exhibit clearly in one most important sphere the unlimited power established by the Norman Conquest.
To this year, 1070, in which was begun the reformation of the Church, was assigned at a later time another work of constitutional interest. The unofficial compiler of a code of laws, the Leges Edwardi, written in the reign of Henry I, and drawn largely from the legislation of the Saxon kings, ascribed his work, after a fashion not unusual with writers of his kind, to the official act of an earlier king. He relates that a great national inquest was ordered by King William in this year, to ascertain and establish the laws of the English. Each county elected a jury of twelve men, who knew the laws, and these juries coming together in the presence of the king declared on oath what were the legal customs of the land. So runs the preface of the code which was given out as compiled from this testimony. Such a plan and procedure would not be out of harmony with what we know of William's methods and policy. The machinery of the jury, which was said to be employed, was certainly introduced into England by the first Norman king, and was used by him for the establishment of facts, both in national undertakings like the Domesday Book and very probably in local cases arising in the courts. We know also that he desired to leave the old laws undisturbed so far as possible, and the year 1070 is one in which an effort to define and settle the future legal code of the state would naturally fall. But the story must be rejected as unhistorical. An event of such importance as this inquisition must have been, if it took place, could hardly have occurred without leaving its traces in contemporary records of some sort, and an official code of this kind would have produced results in the history of English law of which we find no evidence. The Saxon law and the machinery of the local courts did survive the Conquest with little change, but no effort was made to reduce the customs of the land to systematic and written form until a later time, until a time indeed when the old law was beginning to give place to the new.
[4] See H. Bohmer, Die Falschungen Erzbischof Lanfranks van Canterbury (Leipzig, 1902).
[5] Böhmer, Kirche und Staat in England und in der Normandie, pp. 103-106.
[6] Eadmer, Historia Novorum, p. 9.
[7] Böhmer, Kirche und Staat, pp. 126 ff.
[8] Eadmer, Hist. Nov., p. 10.
CHAPTER III
WILLIAM'S LATER YEARS
Political events had not waited for the reformation of the Church, and long before these reforms were completed, England had become a thoroughly settled state under the new king. The beginning of the year 1070 is a turning-point in the reign of William. The necessity for fighting was not over, but from this date onwards there was no more fighting for the actual possession of the land. The irreconcilables had still to be dealt with; in one small locality they retained even yet some resisting power; the danger of foreign invasion had again to be met: but not for one moment after William's return from the devastation of the north and west was there even the remotest possibility of undoing the Conquest.