the honor of their women, and often for their lives, deserted their habitations and fled into the woods on the king’s approach.  No circumstance could be more dishonorable to a prince; but happily, like many other great abuses, it gave rise to a great reform, which went much further than its immediate purposes.  This disorder, which the punishment of offenders could only palliate, was entirely taken away by commuting personal service for a rent in money; which regulation, passing from the king to all the inferior lords, in a short time wrought a great change in the state of the nation.  To humble the great men, more arbitrary methods were used.  The adherence to the title of Robert was a cause, or a pretence, of depriving many of their vast possessions, which were split or parcelled out amongst the king’s creatures, with great injustice to particulars, but in the consequences with general and lasting benefit.  The king held his courts, according to the custom, at Christmas and Easter, but he seldom kept both festivals in the same place.  He made continual progresses into all parts of his kingdom, and brought the royal authority and person home to the doors of his haughty barons, which kept them in strict obedience during his long and severe reign.

His contests with the Church, concerning the right of investiture, were more obstinate and more dangerous.  As this is an affair that troubled all Europe as well as England, and holds deservedly a principal place in the story of those times, it will not be impertinent to trace it up to its original.  In the early times of Christianity, when religion was only drawn from its obscurity to be persecuted, when a bishop was only a candidate for martyrdom, neither the preferment, nor the right of bestowing it, were sought with great ambition.  Bishops were then elected, and often against their desire, by their clergy and the people:  the subordinate ecclesiastical districts were provided for in the same manner.  After the Roman Empire became Christian, this usage, so generally established, still maintained its ground.  However, in the principal cities, the Emperor frequently exercised the privilege of giving a sanction to the choice, and sometimes of appointing the bishop; though, for the most part, the popular election still prevailed.  But when, the Barbarians, after destroying the Empire, had at length submitted their necks to the Gospel, their kings and great men, full of zeal and gratitude to their instructors, endowed the Church with large territories and great privileges.  In this case it was but natural that they should be the patrons of those dignities and nominate to that power which arose from their own free bounty.  Hence the bishoprics in the greatest part of Europe became in effect, whatever some few might have been in appearance, merely donative.  And as the bishoprics formed so many seigniories, when the feudal establishment was completed, they partook of the feudal nature, so far as they were subjects