The oppression of wardship and marriage was perpetuated even till the reign of Charles II.; and it appears from Glanville,[**] 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.
[* Glanv.lib.ii.cap.

36.] [** Lib.vii.cap.

15.] 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.

What is called a relief in the Conqueror's laws, preserved by Ingulf, 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.