A.D. 1100. EASCLPn IS 1JIPEISONED. 191 trary to ecclesiastical law and the prescribed rules of his order (for he was a priest), first put up to sale abbacies, and then bishoprics, the holders of which were dead, having lately received the presentations from the king, to whom he paid yearly no small sum of money. The influence of this man became so extensive, and so greatly did his power increase in a short space of time, that the king appointed him judge and general manager of the whole kingdom. Having secured this extent of power, in every quarter throughout England he mulcted some of the richest and most wealthy by taking from them their property and lands. The poorer classes he unceasingly oppressed by heavy and unjust taxes, and, in many ways, both before he reeeived his bishopric and after, persecuted both great and small in common, and ceased not to do so up to the period of the king's death. Eor on the very day on which the king met with his death, ho held in his own hands the archbishopric of Canterbury and the bishoprics of "Winchester and Salisbury. HENRY THE FIRST. King William reigned fourteen years all but twenty-eight days, and was succeeded by his younger brother, Henry, Shortly after, on the nones of August, he was consecrated king at Westminster, by Maurice, the bishop of London ; and, on the day of his consecration, he set free the holy church of God, which had been sold and let to farm in his brother's time; he did away with all bad customs and iniquitous exactions by which the kingdom of England was unrighteously oppressed ; he also established unbroken peace in his kingdom, and commanded that it should be maintained. To all in common he restored the laws of king Edward, together with those amendments to them which his father had made : but the forests, which he had made and held, he retained in his own hands. Not long after this, on the seventh day before the ides of September, he placed Ranulph, the bishop of Durham, in confinement in the Tower of London, and recalled Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, from Gaul. In the meantime, Robert, earl of Flanders, and Eustace, earl of Boulogne, returned home first, and after them Robert, duke of