The Central Government 115
the coronation ceremony and the important coronation
oath, he followed the Anglo-Saxon form.1 But he im-
mediately began to rule as no Anglo-Saxon king had ruled,
and the introduction of feudal tenure and the ambitious
expectations of his followers did not reduce him to the
empty kind of suzerainty held by the king of France.
English kingship changed because there had been a con-
quest and because the Conqueror was what he was, and
because his successors were, for the most part, strong
men with a similar determination to rule. Had he been
succeeded by weaMings, there is no reason to suppose
that it would not finally have fallen back where it was
in the person of Edward the Confessor. The Norman
kings were not consciously working out an absolutism;
they thought it possible to obtain enough power under
the old forms. The facts preceded theory; political con-
ceptions were hazy in the middle ages, and before any
theory of absolute monarchy arose the king's power
began to be limited in a new way and a new set of ideas
began to form.
Notwithstanding this general precedence of fact over
theory, there is no doubt that there was some notion
connected with all medieval kingship that the king was
the source of law and the highest authority in administer-
ing law. It had passed into Prankish kingship, as had
so much else, from Rome. It is easy to get a wrong
impression of the vividness with which this had ever been
present on the continent, and it did not displace old
Germanic conceptions of law. We see it quite clearly
in Charlemagne, but after him it had surely lost all re-
flection in facts. It can also be traced in the Roman
gift to Anglo-Saxon kingship, and some Anglo-Saxon
kings tried to make it a reality. The Norman Conquest
appears to have strengthened this idea in England, and
it was to be an important force in the making of the
English judicial system.2
1 On coronation oaths, see Maitland, C. H. E., pp. 98-100.
2 See Part III, § I