dependence of a VASSAL upon his lord; and this may be reckoned
among the several causes which prevented the continental notions of
independence upon the Crown from ever taking root among the English
aristocracy."

A more recent writer, Mr. FREEMAN ("History of the Norman
Conquest," published in 1871, vol. iv., p. 695), repeats the same
idea, though not exactly in the same words. After describing the
assemblage which encamped in the plains around Salisbury, he says:

"In this great meeting a decree was passed, which is one of the
most memorable pieces of legislation in the whole history of
England. In other lands where military tenure existed, it was
beginning to be held that he who plighted his faith to a lord, who
was the man of the king, was the man of that lord only, and did not
become the man of the king himself. It was beginning to be held
that if such a man followed his immediate lord to battle against
the common sovereign, the lord might draw on himself the guilt of
treason, but the men that followed him would be guiltless. William
himself would have been amazed if any vassal of his had refused to
draw his sword in a war with France on the score of duty toward an
over-lord. But in England, at all events, William was determined to
be full king over the whole land, to be immediate sovereign and
immediate lord of every man. A statute was passed that every
FREEMAN in the realm should take the oath of fealty to King
William."

Mr. FREEMAN quotes Stubbs's "Select Charters," p. 80, as his
authority. Stubbs gives the text of that charter, with ten others.
He says: "These charters are from 'Textus Roffensis,' a manuscript