To give greater authenticity to these concessions, Henry lodged a copy of his charter in some abbey of each county, as if desirous that it should be exposed to the view of all his subjects, and remain a perpetual rule for the limitation and direction of his government: yet it is certain, that, after the present purpose was served, he never once thought, during his reign, of observing one single article of it; and the whole fell so much into neglect and oblivion, that in the following century, when the barons, who had heard an obscure tradition of it, desired to make it the model of the great charter which they exacted from King John, they could with difficulty find a copy of it in the kingdom. But as to the grievances here meant to be redressed, they were still continued in their full extent; and the royal authority, in all those particulars, lay under no manner of restriction. Reliefs of heirs, so capital an article, were never effectually fixed till the time of Magna Charta [h]; and it is evident that the general promise here given, of accepting a just and lawful relief, ought to have been reduced to more precision, in order to give security to the subject. The oppression of wardship and marriage was perpetuated even till the reign of Charles II. And it appears from Glanville [i], the famous justiciary of Henry II., that in his time, where any man died intestate, an accident which must have been very frequent when the art of writing was so little known, the king, or the lord of the fief, pretended to seize all the movables, and to exclude every heir, even the children of the deceased: a sure mark of a tyrannical and arbitrary government. [FN [h] Glanv. lib. 2. cap. 36. What is called a relief in the Conqueror's laws, preserved by Ingulph, seems to have been the heriot; since reliefs, as well as the other burdens of the feudal law, were unknown in the age of the Confessor, whose laws these originally were. [i] Lib. 7. cap. 16. This practice was contrary to the laws of King Edward ratified by the Conqueror, as we learn from Ingulph, p. 91. But laws had at this time very little influence: power and violence governed every thing.]
The Normans, indeed, who domineered in England, were, during this age, so licentious a people, that they may be pronounced incapable of any true or regular liberty; which requires such improvement in knowledge and morals as can only be the result of reflection and experience, and must grow to perfection during several ages of settled and established government. A people so insensible to the rights of their sovereign as to disjoint, without necessity, the hereditary succession, and permit a younger brother to intrude himself into the place of the elder, whom they esteemed, and who was guilty of no crime, but being absent, could not expect that that prince would pay any greater regard to their privileges, or allow his engagements to fetter his power and debar him from any considerable interest or convenience. They had, indeed, arms in their hands, which prevented the establishment of a total despotism, and left their posterity sufficient power, whenever they should attain a sufficient degree of reason, to assure true liberty: but their turbulent disposition frequently prompted them to make such use of their arms, that they were more fitted to obstruct the execution of justice, than to stop the career of violence and oppresion. The prince, finding that greater opposition was often made to him when he enforced the laws than when he violated them, was apt to render his own will and pleasure the sole rule of government; and, at every emergence, to consider more the power of the persons whom he might offend, than the rights of those whom he might injure. The very form of this charter of Henry proves that the Norman barons (for they, rather than the people of England, were chiefly concerned in it) were totally ignorant of the nature of united monarchy, and were ill qualified to conduct, in conjunction with their sovereign, the machine of government. It is an act of his sole power, is the result of his free grace, contains some articles which bind others as well as himself, and is therefore unfit to be the deed of any one who possesses not the whole legislative power, and who may not at pleasure revoke all his concessions.