All this is a vast system of legal fictions; for William's whole position, the whole scheme of his government, rested on a system of legal fictions.Domesday is full of them; one might almost say that there is nothing else there.A very attentive study of Domesday might bring out the fact that William was a foreign conqueror, and that the book itself was a record of the process by which he took the lands of the natives who had fought against him to reward the strangers who had fought for him.But nothing of this kind appears on the surface of the record.The great facts of the Conquest are put out of sight.William is taken for granted, not only as the lawful king, but as the immediate successor of Edward.The "time of King Edward" and the "time of King William" are the two times that the law knows of.The compilers of the record are put to some curious shifts to describe the time between "the day when King Edward was alive and dead" and the day "when King William came into England." That coming might have been as peaceful as the coming of James the First or George the First.The two great battles are more than once referred to, but only casually in the mention of particular persons.A very sharp critic might guess that one of them had something to do with King William's coming into England;but that is all.Harold appears only as Earl; it is only in two or three places that we hear of a "time of Harold," and even of Harold "seizing the kingdom" and "reigning." These two or three places stand out in such contrast to the general language of the record that we are led to think that the scribe must have copied some earlier record or taken down the words of some witness, and must have forgotten to translate them into more loyal formulae.So in recording who held the land in King Edward's day and who in King William's, there is nothing to show that in so many cases the holder under Edward had been turned out to make room for the holder under William.The former holder is marked by the perfectly colourless word "ancestor" ("antecessor"), a word as yet meaning, not "forefather," but "predecessor" of any kind.In Domesday the word is most commonly an euphemism for "dispossessed Englishman." It is a still more distinct euphemism where the Norman holder is in more than one place called the "heir" of the dispossessed Englishmen.
The formulae of Domesday are the most speaking witness to the spirit of outward legality which ruled every act of William.In this way they are wonderfully instructive; but from the formulae alone no one could ever make the real facts of William's coming and reign.It is the incidental notices which make us more at home in the local and personal life of this reign than of any reign before or for a long time after.The Commissioners had to report whether the King's will had been everywhere carried out, whether every man, great and small, French and English, had what the King meant him to have, neither more nor less.And they had often to report a state of things different from what the King had meant to be.Many men had not all that King William had meant them to have, and many others had much more.Normans had taken both from Englishmen and from other Normans.Englishmen had taken from Englishmen; some had taken from ecclesiastical bodies; some had taken from King William himself; nay King William himself holds lands which he ought to give up to another man.This last entry at least shows that William was fully ready to do right, according to his notions of right.So also the King's two brothers are set down among the chief offenders.Of these unlawful holdings of land, marked in the technical language of the Survey as INVASIONES and OCCUPATIONES, many were doubtless real cases of violent seizure, without excuse even according to William's reading of the law.But this does not always follow, even when the language of the Survey would seem to imply it.Words implying violence, PER VIM and the like, are used in the legal language of all ages, where no force has been used, merely to mark a possession as illegal.We are startled at finding the Apostle Paul set down as one of the offenders; but the words "sanctus Paulus invasit" mean no more than that the canons of Saint Paul's church in London held lands to which the Commissioners held that they had no good title.
It is these cases where one man held land which another claimed that gave opportunity for those personal details, stories, notices of tenures and customs, which make Domesday the most precious store of knowledge of the time.
One fruitful and instructive source of dispute comes from the way in which the lands in this or that district were commonly granted out.
The in-comer, commonly a foreigner, received all the lands which such and such a man, commonly a dispossessed Englishman, held in that shire or district.The grantee stepped exactly into the place of the ANTECESSOR; he inherited all his rights and all his burthens.
