and arbitrarily subject them to feudal dependence; but, as the
fedual law was at that time the prevailing law of Europe, William
I., who had always governed by this policy, might probably
recommend it to our ancestors as the most obvious and ready way to
put them upon a footing with their neighbors, and to secure the
nation against any future attempts from them. We accordingly find
among the laws of William I. a law enacting feudal law itself, not
EO NOMINE, but in effect, inasmuch as it requires from all persons
the same engagements to, and introduces the same dependence upon,
the king as supreme lord of all the lands of England, as were
supposed to be due to a supreme lord by the feudal law. The law I
mean is the LII. law of William I."

This view is adopted by Sir William Blackstone, who writes (vol.
ii., p. 47):

"From the prodicious slaughter of the English nobility at the
battle of Hastings, and the fruitless insurrection of those who
survived, such numerous forfeitures had accrued that he (William)
was able to reward his Norman followers with very large and
extensive possessions, which gave a handle to monkish historians,
and such as have implicitly followed them to represent him as
having by the right of the sword, seized upon all the lands of
England, and dealt them out again to his own favorites--a
supposition grounded upon a mistaken sense of the word conquest,
which in its feudal acceptation signifies no more than acquisition,
and this has led many hasty writers into a strange historical
mistake, and one which, upon the slightest examination, will be
found to be most untrue.