sort ranked among the disinherited, was of all ministers of the royal will the most eager to draw the heritage of every man, without respect to birth or order, into the hands of the master whom he served too faithfully.
His changes and exactions systematic.
His alleged spoliation of the rich.
His dealings with the Ætheling Henry.
Witness of the Chronicle.
But we shall altogether misunderstand both Flambard
and his master, if we take either of them for vulgar
spoilers, living as it were from hand to mouth, and
casually grasping any sources of gain which chanced to
be thrown in their way. Whatever Flambard did he
did according to rule and system; nay more, he did it
according to the severest rules of logic. Amidst the
vague declamations which set him before us as the
general robber of all men, we light on particular facts
and phrases which give us the clue to the real nature of
his doings. It is worth notice that, in more than one
picture, the rich are enlarged on as the special victims of
his extortions; in one the Ætheling Henry himself is
spoken of as having suffered deeply at his hands.[1]
We may guess that this has some special reference to
the way in which Henry was defrauded of the lands of
his mother, a business in which Flambard is likely
enough to have had a share.[2] These references to the
wrongs done to the rich have their significance; they
point to a cunningly devised system of Flambard's, by
which, the greater a man's estate was, the more surely
was he marked for extortion. The legislation of Flambard,
if we can call that legislation which seems never to
have been set down in any formal statute,[3] was not at
all of the kind which catches the small flies and lets the
large ones get through. As we have seen in some other
cases,[4] a seemingly casual expression of our native
