by greater confiscations and lessened by greater grants than ever.
For a moment, every lay estate had been part of the land of
William. And far more than had been the land of the nation
remained the land of the King, to be dealt with as he thought good.

In the tenure of land William seems to have made no formal change.
But the circumstances of his reign gave increased strength to
certain tendencies which had been long afloat. And out of them, in
the next reign, the malignant genius of Randolf Flambard devised a
systematic code of oppression. Yet even in his work there is
little of formal change. There are no laws of William Rufus. The
so called feudal incidents, the claims of marriage, wardship, and
the like, on the part of the lord, the ancient heriot developed
into the later relief, all these things were in the germ under
William, as they had been in the germ long before him. In the
hands of Randolf Flambard they stiffen into established custom;
their legal acknowledgement comes from the charter of Henry the
First which promises to reform their abuses. Thus the Conqueror
clearly claimed the right to interfere with the marriages of his
nobles, at any rate to forbid a marriage to which he objected on
grounds of policy. Under Randolf Flambard this became a regular
claim, which of course was made a means of extorting money. Under
Henry the claim is regulated and modified, but by being regulated
and modified, it is legally established.

The ordinary administration of the kingdom went on under William,
greatly modified by the circumstances of his reign, but hardly at
all changed in outward form. Like the kings that were before him,
he "wore his crown" at the three great feasts, at Easter at
Winchester, at Pentecost at Westminster, at Christmas at