258 The Period of Constitution Making
be like other kings and they like other king's vassals.
He found in the English sheriff a means to accomplish
things in the localities and he instructed him to hold
pleas involving royal interests even within the holdings
of great lords. The profits of this jurisdiction went to
the king and lessened the judicial income of the vassal.
Peace was maintained, and the rights of private warfare,
which surely, it was thought, belonged to a king's vassals
even if not to a duke's, were rigidly suppressed. Many
of William's vassals felt that what he was doing amounted
to a breach of Ms contract. They rose against him, and,
despairing of making him recognise their rights, they
purposed to break all relations with Mm and drive him
from the land. Thus occurred, in 1075, the first true
feudal revolt in England. It was a revolt not against
William as king, but as suzerain. It was the first of a
series of such revolts which lasted with little change in
character for about a century. The barons had to learn
in England, as a result of the king's power, tla lesson
foreign to their class anywhere else in the world of that
time, the lesson of combination with one another." In
France combinations of the barons were much less com-
mon. There they could hope for independence and
looked on one another as rivals. They fought one
another as well as the king. Hence their risings had
4 * more of a personal and less of a public character/'1
When William II. came to the throne, he not unnatural-
ly had a revolt of these barons on his hands at the very-
outset. It is interesting that he began to make verbal
promises of good laws, especially a mitigation of the
forest laws. He did this in order to gain the support of
the English and of as many Normans as possible. But
during his reign, with the help of Flambard, he broke
feudal custom in more specific and exasperating ways
than his father. Dues and the rights of overlords with
respect to marriage, wardship, and other feudal incidents
were becoming fixed by custom, and hence were covered
* Adams, Civilisation during the Middle Ages, pp. 334, 335.