The baron led his own knights under his
banner. The foot soldiers were from the fyrd or were mercenaries.
Every free man was sworn to join in the defense of the king, his
lands and his honor, within England and without.
The Saxon governing class was destroyed. The independent power of
earls, who had been drawn from three great family houses, was
curtailed. Most died or fled the country. Some men were allowed to
redeem their land by money payment if they showed loyalty to the
Conquerer. Well-born women crowded into nunneries to escape Norman
violence. The people were deprived of their most popular leaders,
who were excluded from all positions of trust and profit,
especially all the clergy. The earldoms became fiefs instead of
magistracies.
The Conquerer was a stern and fierce man and ruled as an autocrat
by terror. Whenever the people revolted or resisted his mandates,
he seized their lands or destroyed the crops and laid waste the
countryside and so that they starved to death. His rule was
strong, resolute, wise, and wary because he had learned to command
himself as well as other men. He was not arbitrary or oppressive.
The Conquerer had a strict system of policing the nation. Instead
of the Anglo-Saxon self-government throughout the districts and
hundreds of resident authorities in local courts, he aimed at
substituting for it the absolute rule of the barons under military
rule so favorable to the centralizing power of the Crown.
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