his coming at all and bringing a host of strangers with him, there
is singularly little to blame in the acts of the Conqueror. Of
bloodshed, of wanton interference with law and usage, there is
wonderfully little. Englishmen and Normans were held to have
settled down in peace under the equal protection of King William.
The two races were drawing together; the process was beginning
which, a hundred years later, made it impossible, in any rank but
the highest and the lowest, to distinguish Norman from Englishman.
Among the smaller landowners and the townsfolk this intermingling
had already begun, while earls and bishops were not yet so
exclusively Norman, nor had the free churls of England as yet sunk
so low as at a later stage. Still some legislation was needed to
settle the relations of the two races. King William proclaimed the
"renewal of the law of King Edward." This phrase has often been
misunderstood; it is a common form when peace and good order are
restored after a period of disturbance. The last reign which is
looked back to as to a time of good government becomes the standard
of good government, and it is agreed between king and people,
between contending races or parties, that things shall be as they
were in the days of the model ruler. So we hear in Normandy of the
renewal of the law of Rolf, and in England of the renewal of the
law of Cnut. So at an earlier time Danes and Englishmen agreed in
the renewal of the law of Edgar. So now Normans and Englishmen
agreed in the renewal of the law of Edward. There was no code
either of Edward's or of William's making. William simply bound
himself to rule as Edward had ruled. But in restoring the law of
King Edward, he added, "with the additions which I have decreed for
the advantage of the people of the English."

These few words are indeed weighty. The little legislation of