turn strangers into Englishmen. And that character was impressed
on William's work by William himself. The king claiming by legal
right, but driven to assert his right by the sword, was unlike both
the foreign king who comes in by peaceful succession and the
foreign king who comes in without even the pretext of law. The
Normans too, if born soldiers, were also born lawyers, and no man
was more deeply impressed with the legal spirit than William
himself. He loved neither to change the law nor to transgress the
law, and he had little need to do either. He knew how to make the
law his instrument, and, without either changing or transgressing
it, to use it to make himself all-powerful. He thoroughly enjoyed
that system of legal fictions and official euphemisms which marks
his reign. William himself became in some sort an Englishman, and
those to whom he granted English lands had in some sort to become
Englishmen in order to hold them. The Norman stepped into the
exact place of the Englishman whose land he held; he took his
rights and his burthens, and disputes about those rights and
burthens were judged according to English law by the witness of
Englishmen. Reigning over two races in one land, William would be
lord of both alike, able to use either against the other in case of
need. He would make the most of everything in the feelings and
customs of either that tended to strengthen his own hands. And, in
the state of things in which men then found themselves, whatever
strengthened William's hands strengthened law and order in his
kingdom.

There was therefore nothing to lead William to make any large
changes in the letter of the English law. The powers of a King of
the English, wielded as he knew how to wield them, made him as
great as he could wish to be. Once granting the original wrong of