the latter; and he enforced the ecclesiastical reforms of Hildebrand,
especially the prohibition of the marriage of the clergy, lest they
should convert their benefices into hereditary fiefs for the benefit of
their children.

For the principles of heredity and primogeniture were among the
strongest of feudal tendencies. Primogeniture had proved politically
advantageous; and one of the best things in the Anglo-Saxon monarchy
had been its avoidance of the practice, prevalent on the Continent, of
kings dividing their dominions among their sons, instead of leaving all
united to the eldest. But the principle of heredity, sound enough in
national monarchy, was to prove very dangerous in the other spheres of
politics. Office tended to become hereditary, and to be regarded as the
private property of the family rather than a position of national
trust, thus escaping national control and being prostituted for
personal ends. The earldoms in England were so perverted; originally
they were offices like the modern lords-lieutenancies of the shires;
gradually they became hereditary titles. The only remedy the king had
was to deprive the earls of their power, and entrust it to a nominal
deputy, the sheriff. In France, the sheriff (_vice-comes_, _vicomte_)
became hereditary in his turn, and a prolonged struggle over the same
tendency was fought in England. Fortunately, the crown and country
triumphed over the hereditary principle in this respect; the sheriff
remained an official, and when viscounts were created later, in
imitation of the French nobility, they received only a meaningless and
comparatively innocuous title.

Some slight check, too, was retained upon the crown owing to a series
of disputed successions to the throne. The Anglo-Saxon monarchy had
always been in theory elective, and William had been careful to observe