The feudal movement which in other lands was breaking up every nation into a mass of loosely-knit states with nobles at their head who owned little save a nominal allegiance to their king threatened to break up England itself.

What hindered its triumph was the power of the Crown, and it is the story of this struggle between the monarchy and these tendencies to feudal isolation which fills the period between the death of Eadred and the conquest of the Norman.

It was a struggle which England shared with the rest of the western world, but its issue here was a peculiar one.

In other countries feudalism won an easy victory over the central government.

In England alone the monarchy was strong enough to hold feudalism at bay.