The castle granted to Earl Hugh. We are not told what were Henry’s relations with Britanny at the time when this great border fortress passed into his hands. Bretons had been his only friends at the time of the siege of the Mount; but their friendship for the Count of the Côtentin was perhaps felt for him, not so much in that character as in that of the enemy of the Norman Duke and the English King. It may possibly mark a feeling that the Celtic peninsula might again become a dangerous land, when the guardianship of the chief bulwark against the Bretwealas of the mainland was given to one who had full experience of warfare with the Bretwealas of the great island. The Earl of Chester had a hereditary call to be the keeper of the castle of Saint James. The fortress had, on its first building, been entrusted by the Conqueror to the guardianship of Earl Hugh’s father, the Viscount Richard of Avranches. Hugh’s treason when King and Duke came against him was now forgotten; his earlier and later services were remembered; and the restored prince, now once more Count as well as Ætheling, granted the border castle, not as a mere castellanship, but as his own proper fief, to the lord of the distant City of the Legions.[902]

We have thus seen the power of William the Red firmly established on both sides of the sea. He had received the homage of Scotland; he had enlarged the bounds of England; he had won for himself a Norman dominion hemming in the dominions which are left to the nominal sovereign of the Norman land. And it is wonderful with how little fighting all this had been done. It was only before the island rock of Saint Michael that the chivalrous King had any opportunity of winning renown by feats of chivalry. A year follows, crowded with events, but all of them events which happened within the four seas of our own island. Our next chapter will therefore deal mainly with English affairs, and with some aspects of English affairs which yield in importance to none in the whole history of England. One of the chief personages of our story now comes before us in the form of the holy Anselm. Few more striking personal contrasts are to be found in the whole range of history than those parts of our tale where Anselm and William meet face to face. But more memorable still, in a general aspect of English history, is the work which has been silently going on ever since William Rufus was made fast on his throne, the work which stands broadly forth as a finished thing when the controversy between King and Primate begins. Assuredly no “feudal system” was ever introduced into England by any law of William the Great; but it is only a slight stretch of language to say that something which, if any one chooses, may be called a “feudal system” was, during these years, devised in and for England by the craft and subtlety of Randolf Flambard.