Rufus nor the heavy and equal pressure of the government of Henry I
could extinguish the tendency toward it. It was only after it had, under
Stephen, broken out into anarchy and plunged the whole nation in misery;
when the great houses founded by the barons of the Conquest had suffered
forfeiture or extinction; when the Normans had become Englishmen under
the legal and constitutional reforms of Henry II--that the royal
authority, in close alliance with the nation, was enabled to put an end
to the evil.

William the Conqueror claimed the crown of England as the chosen heir of
Edward the Confessor. It was a claim which the English did not admit,
and of which the Normans saw the fallacy, but which he himself
consistently maintained and did his best to justify. In that claim he
saw not only the justification of the Conquest in the eyes of the
church, but his great safeguard against the jealous and aggressive host
by whose aid he had realized it; therefore, immediately after the battle
of Hastings he proceeded to seek the national recognition of its
validity. He obtained it from the divided and dismayed _witan_ with no
great trouble, and was crowned by the archbishop of York--the most
influential and patriotic among them--binding himself by the
constitutional promises of justice and good laws. Standing before the
altar at Westminster, "in the presence of the clergy and people he
promised with an oath that he would defend God's holy churches and their
rulers; that he would, moreover, rule the whole people subject to him
with righteousness and royal providence; would enact and hold fast right
law and utterly forbid rapine and unrighteous judgments." The form of
election and acceptance was regularly observed and the legal position of
the new King completed before he went forth to finish the Conquest.

Had it not been for this the Norman host might have fairly claimed a