The reign of unlaw.
General submission. an age, are apt to look on the rule of men of the pen. In the eyes of strict churchmen they must have passed for ungodly scorners of the decencies of their order. To the mass of the people they must have seemed foreign extortioners, and nothing more. They represented the power of the king, and nothing else. In some states of things the power of the king, even of a despotic king, may be welcomed as the representative of law against force. But under Rufus the power of the king was before all things the representative of unlaw. Yet though all murmured, all submitted. The son of the poor priest of the Bessin, clothed with a power purely official, lorded it over all classes and orders. Earls, prelates, and people, were alike held down by the guide and minister of the royal will.
Position of Rufus favourable for his schemes.
Effect on national unity.
One cause of this general submission is doubtless to be
found in the immediate circumstances of the time. The
alliance of the King and the English people had for the
moment broken the power of the Norman nobles. The
ecclesiastical estate was left without a head by the death
of Lanfranc. The popular estate was left without a head,
as soon as the King turned away from the people who
had given him his crown, and broke all the promises that
he had made to them. There was no power of combination;
the great days when nobles, clergy, and commons,
could join together against the king, as three orders in
one nation, were yet far distant. Each class had to bear
its own grievances as it could; no class could get any help
from any other class; and the King's picked mercenaries,
kept at the expense of all classes, were stronger than any
one class by itself. Yet we cannot doubt that even the
rule of Rufus and Flambard did something towards the
great work of founding national unity. All the inhabitants
of the land, if they had nothing else in common,
had common grievances and a common oppressor.
