William's reign takes throughout the shape of additions. Nothing
old is repealed; a few new enactments are set up by the side of the
old ones. And these words describe, not only William's actual
legislation, but the widest general effect of his coming. The
Norman Conquest did little towards any direct abolition of the
older English laws or institutions. But it set up some new
institutions alongside of old ones; and it brought in not a few
names, habits, and ways of looking at things, which gradually did
their work. In England no man has pulled down; many have added and
modified. Our law is still the law of King Edward with the
additions of King William. Some old institutions took new names;
some new institutions with new names sprang up by the side of old
ones. Sometimes the old has lasted, sometimes the new. We still
have a king and not a roy; but he gathers round him a parliament
and not a vitenagemot. We have a sheriff and not a viscount; but
his district is more commonly called a county than a shire. But
county and shire are French and English for the same thing, and
"parliament" is simply French for the "deep speech" which King
William had with his Witan. The National Assembly of England has
changed its name and its constitution more than once; but it has
never been changed by any sudden revolution, never till later times
by any formal enactment. There was no moment when one kind of
assembly supplanted another. And this has come because our
Conqueror was, both by his disposition and his circumstances, led
to act as a preserver and not as a destroyer.

The greatest recorded acts of William, administrative and
legislative, come in the last days of his reign. But there are
several enactments of William belonging to various periods of his
reign, and some of them to this first moment of peace. Here we