the king could rely on the help of the bulk of the free people in all
struggles with his feudatories, and the people, finding that their
connection with their lords would be no excuse for unfaithfulness to the
king, had a further inducement to adhere to the more permanent
institutions.

In the department of law the direct changes introduced by the Conquest
were not great. Much that is regarded as peculiarly Norman was developed
upon English soil, and although originated and systematized by Norman
lawyers, contained elements which would have worked in a very different
way in Normandy. Even the vestiges of Carlovingian practice which appear
in the inquests of the Norman reigns are modified by English usage. The
great inquest of all, the _Domesday_ survey, may owe its principle to a
foreign source; the oath of the reporters may be Norman, but the
machinery that furnishes the jurors is native; "the king's barons
inquire by the oath of the sheriff of the shire, and of all the barons
and their Frenchmen, and of the whole hundred, the priest, the reeve,
and six _ceorls_ of every township."

The institution of the collective Frank pledge, which recent writers
incline to treat as a Norman innovation, is so distinctly colored by
English custom that it has been generally regarded as purely indigenous.
If it were indeed a precaution taken by the new rulers against the
avoidance of justice by the absconding or harboring of criminals, it
fell with ease into the usages and even the legal terms which had been
common for other similar purposes since the reign of Athelstan. The
trial by battle, which on clearer evidence seems to have been brought in
by the Normans, is a relic of old Teutonic jurisprudence, the absence of
which from the Anglo-Saxon courts is far more curious than its
introduction from abroad.