of the wisdom of the Conqueror,--a work in all respects useful and
worthy of a better age.

The Conqueror knew very well how much discontent must have arisen from
the great revolutions which his conquest produced in all men's property,
and in the general tenor of the government. He, therefore, as much as
possible to guard against every sudden attempt, forbade any light or
fire to continue in any house after a certain bell, called curfew, had
sounded. This bell rung at about eight in the evening. There was policy
in this; and it served to prevent the numberless disorders which arose
from the late civil commotions.

For the same purpose of strengthening his authority, he introduced the
Norman law, not only in its substance, but in all its forms, and ordered
that all proceedings should be had according to that law in the French
language.[74] The change wrought by the former part of this regulation
could not have been very grievous; and it was partly the necessary
consequence of the establishment of the new tenures, and which wanted a
new law to regulate them: in other respects the Norman institutions were
not very different from the English. But to force, against nature, a new
language upon a conquered people, to make them, strangers in those
courts of justice in which they were still to retain a considerable
share, to be reminded, every time they had recourse to government for
protection, of the slavery in which it held them,--this is one of those
acts of superfluous tyranny from which very few conquering nations or
parties have forborne, though no way necessary, but often prejudicial to
their safety.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1071.]