the highest grades of organization; the King's court of counsellors was
composed of his feudal tenants; the ownership of land was now the
qualification for the witenagemot, instead of wisdom; the earldoms
became fiefs instead of magistracies, and even the bishops had to accept
the status of barons. There was a very certain danger that the mere
change of persons might bring in the whole machinery of hereditary
magistracies, and that king and people might be edged out of the
administration of justice, taxation, and other functions of supreme or
local independence.

Against this it was most important to guard; as the Conqueror learned
from the events of the first year of his reign, when the severe rule of
Odo and William Fitzosbern had provoked Herefordshire. Ralph Guader,
Roger Montgomery, and Hugh of Avranches filled the places of Edwin and
Morcar and the brothers of Harold. But the conspiracy of the earls in
1074 opened William's eyes to the danger of this proceeding, and from
that time onward he governed the provinces through sheriffs immediately
dependent on himself, avoiding the foreign plan of appointing hereditary
counts, as well as the English custom of ruling by viceregal ealdormen.
He was, however, very sparing in giving earldoms at all, and inclined to
confine the title to those who were already counts in Normandy or in
France.

To this plan there were some marked exceptions, which may be accounted
for either on the ground that the arrangements had been completed before
the need of watchfulness was impressed on the King by the treachery of
the Normans, or on that of the exigencies of national defence. In these
cases he created, or suffered the continuance of, great palatine
jurisdictions; earldoms in which the earls were endowed with the
superiority of whole counties, so that all the land-owners held feudally