ABSTRACT
Following the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, William the Conqueror took stock of what he had conquered in the Domesday Book, a national inventory of land holdings, other wealth, and a variety of local customs and practices, intended largely to serve as the basis for assessing taxes. Over the next five centuries, England developed its system of limited monarchy with power shifting from the Crown to Parliaments. Nothing less than a Parliament could rescue the Five Knights; their lawyers needed the force of the realm behind them. On and on it went, the great roll and roster confirming the rights of Englishmen. Nothing was slurred over, nothing extenuated. It was an extraordinary scene. These men who wept outright before their fellows were not the timid spirits of Parliament but members whose courage already had been tested, some of whom had suffered imprisonment for the cause.
