CHAPTER I

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INTRODUCTION.

[Sidenote: Importance of the Norman Conquest, not as the beginning of English history, but as its chief turning-point.]

The Norman Conquest is the great turning-point in the history of the English nation. Since the first settlement of the English in Britain, the introduction of Christianity is the only event which can compare with it in importance. And there is this wide difference between the two. The introduction of Christianity was an event which could hardly fail to happen sooner or later; in accepting the Gospel, the English only followed the same law which, sooner or later, affected all the Teutonic nations. But the Norman Conquest is something which stands without a parallel in any other Teutonic land. If that Conquest be only looked on in its true light, it is impossible to exaggerate its importance. And yet there is no event whose true nature has been more commonly and more utterly mistaken. No event is less fitted to be taken, as it so often has been taken, for the beginning of our national history. For its whole importance is not the importance which belongs to a beginning, but the importance which belongs to a turning-point. The Norman Conquest brought with it a most extensive foreign infusion, an infusion which affected our blood, our language, our laws, our arts; still it was only an infusion; the older and stronger elements still survived, and in the long run they again made good their supremacy. So far from being the beginning of our national history, the Norman Conquest was the temporary overthrow of our national being. But it was only a temporary overthrow. To a superficial observer the English people might seem for a while to be wiped out of the roll-call of the nations, or to exist only as the bondmen of foreign rulers in their own land. But in a few generations we led captive our conquerors; England was England once again, and the descendants of the Norman invaders were found to be among the truest of Englishmen. England may be as justly proud of rearing such step-children as Simon of Montfort and Edward the First as of being the natural mother of Ælfred and of Harold. In no part of history [Sidenote: Importance of the earlier English history to the right understanding of the Conquest.] can any event be truly understood without reference to the events which went before it and which prepared the way for it. But in no case is such reference more needful than in dealing with an event like that with which we are now concerned. The whole importance of the Norman Conquest consists in the effect which it had on an existing nation, humbled indeed, but neither wiped out nor utterly enslaved, in the changes which it wrought in an existing constitution, which was by degrees greatly modified, but which was never either wholly abolished or wholly trampled under foot. William, King of the English, claimed to reign as the lawful successor of the Kings of the English who reigned before him. He claimed to inherit their rights, and he professed to govern according to their laws. His position therefore, and the whole nature of the great revolution which he wrought, are utterly unintelligible without a full understanding of the state of things which he found existing. Even when one nation actually displaces another, some knowledge of the condition of the displaced nation is necessary to understand the position of the displacing nation. The English Conquest of Britain cannot be thoroughly understood without some knowledge of the earlier history of the Celt and the Roman. But when there is no displacement of a nation, when there is not even the utter overthrow of a constitution, when there are only changes, however many and important, wrought in an existing system, a knowledge of the earlier state of things is an absolutely essential part of any knowledge of the later. The Norman Conquest of England is simply an insoluble puzzle without a clear notion of the condition of England and the English people at the time when the Conqueror and his followers first set foot upon our shores.

[Sidenote: Character of the Norman Conquest as compared with earlier and later conquests.]

The Norman Conquest again is an event which stands by itself in the history of Europe. It took place at a transitional period in the world’s developement. Those elements, Roman and Teutonic, Imperial and ecclesiastical, which stood, as it were, side by side in the system of the early middle age, were then being fused together into the later system of feudal, papal, crusading Europe. The Conquest itself was one of the most important steps in the change. A kingdom which had hitherto been purely Teutonic was brought within the sphere of the laws, the manners, the speech, of the Romance nations. At the very moment when Pope and Cæsar held each other in the death-grasp, a Church which had hitherto maintained a kind of insular and barbaric independence was brought into a far more intimate connexion with the Roman See. And as a conquest, compared with earlier and with later conquests, the Norman Conquest of England holds a middle position between the two classes, and shares somewhat of the nature of both. It was something less than such conquests as form the main subject of history during the great Wandering of the Nations. It was something more than those political conquests which fill up too large a space in the history of modern times. It was much less than a [Sidenote: The immediate change effected by the Norman Conquest less than the change effected by the Barbarian conquests.] national migration; it was much more than a mere change of frontier or of dynasty. It was not such a change as when the first English conquerors slew, expelled, or enslaved the whole nation of the vanquished Britons. It was not even such a change as when Goths or Burgundians sat down as a ruling people, keeping their own language and their own law, and leaving the language and law of Rome to the vanquished Romans. But it was a far greater change than commonly follows on the transfer of a province from one sovereign to another, or even on the forcible acquisition of a crown by an alien dynasty. The conquest of England by William wrought less immediate change than the conquest of Africa by Genseric; it wrought a greater immediate change than the conquest of Sicily by Charles of Anjou. [Sidenote: In what the change really consisted.] It brought with it not only a new dynasty, but a new nobility; it did not expel or transplant the English nation or any part of it; but it gradually deprived the leading men and families of England of their lands and offices, and thrust them down into a secondary position under alien intruders. It did not at once sweep away the old laws and liberties of the land; but it at once changed the manner and spirit of their administration, and it opened the way for endless later changes in the laws themselves. It did not abolish the English language; but it brought in a new language by its side, a language which for a while supplanted it as the language of polite intercourse, and which did not yield to the reviving elder speech till it had affected it by the largest infusion that the vocabulary of one [Sidenote: Formal legislative changes for the most part of a later date.] European tongue ever received from another. The most important of the formal changes in legislation, in language, in the system of government and in the tenure of land, were no immediate consequences of the Conquest, no direct innovations of the reign of William. They were the gradual developements of later times, of times when the Norman as well as the Englishman found himself under the yoke of a foreign master. But the reign of William paved the way for all the later changes that were to come, and the immediate changes which [Sidenote: Immediate results of the Conquest mainly practical.] he himself wrought were, after all, great and weighty. They were in truth none the less great and weighty because they affected the practical condition of the people far more than they affected its written laws and institutions. When a nation is driven to receive a foreigner as its King, when that foreign King divides the highest offices and the greatest estates of the land among his foreign followers, though such a change must be carefully distinguished from changes in the written law, still the change is, for the time, practically the greatest which a nation and its leaders can undergo.

[Sidenote: Plan and extent of the present History.]

I propose then, as a necessary introduction to my narrative of the actual Conquest, to sketch the condition of England and of Normandy at the time when the two nations came into contact with each other. This process will involve a summary of the earlier history of both [Sidenote: Narrative of the actual Conquest and its immediate causes. 1042–1087.] countries. From the beginning of the eleventh century the history of England and of Normandy becomes more and more intermixed, and it will be necessary to tell the story more and more in detail. The period of the actual Conquest and its immediate causes, the reigns of Eadward, of Harold, and of William, will form the centre of the work. The reigns of William’s sons will show the character of the Norman government in England, and the amount of immediate change which it really [Sidenote: Accession of the Angevin dynasty. 1154.] brought with it. With the accession of the Angevin dynasty the purely Norman period comes to an end. A King succeeds who is in one sense both Norman and English, in another sense neither Norman nor English. Presently Norman and Englishman alike have to struggle for their own against the perpetual intrusion of fresh shoals of foreigners seeking their fortunes at the expense of both. The natural effect of this struggle was that Norman and Englishman forgot their differences, and [Sidenote: Reign of Henry the Second. 1154–1189.] united in resistance to the common enemy. Under Henry the Second the struggle is for a while delayed, or veils itself under an ecclesiastical form. A prelate of English birth but of the purest Norman descent, wins the love of the English people in a struggle in which nothing but an unerring instinct could have shown them that their interest was in any way involved. [Sidenote: Degradation of England under Richard the First. 1189–1199.] Under Richard, the most thoroughly foreign of all our Kings, the evil reaches its height, and England might pass for a dependency of the Count of Poitiers. As is usual in cases of national discontent, it is not till the worst day is passed that the counter-revolution openly [Sidenote: National struggle against foreigners. 1214–1272.] begins. Under John and his son Henry, the history of England becomes mainly the history of a struggle between the natives of the land, of whatever race, and the foreign favourites of the court. Norman and Englishman are [Sidenote: 1265.] now reconciled; and by their joint work the Old-English liberties are won back in another form, and the modern [Sidenote: End of the work under Edward the First. 1272–1307.] constitution of England begins. At last England, having already won over her baronage, at last wins over her King. The work of reconciliation is completed under the best and greatest of our later Kings, the first who, since the Norman entered our land, either bore a purely English name or followed a purely English policy. Under the great Edward England finally assumed those constitutional forms which, with mere changes of detail, she has preserved uninterrupted ever since. The work of the Conquest is now over; the two races are united under a legislation whose outward form and language was in a great measure French, but whose real life was drawn from the truest English sources. Here then our narrative, even as the merest sketch, comes to its natural close. But for a long time before this point, a mere sketch, pointing out the working of earlier events in their results, will be all that will be needed. The kernel of my narrative will consist of the history of the five and forty years from the election of Eadward to the death of William. The history of these years will fill my three central volumes, containing the history of the actual Conquest and its immediate causes. This central portion will be introduced, as is essential to its understanding, by a sketch of the events which led to it, gradually developing in minuteness from the beginning of the English Conquest to the extinction of the Danish dynasty in England. And it will be wound up with what is no less essential, with a sketch of the history gradually lessening in minuteness down to the reign of Edward the First, and discussing the permanent results of the Conquest on the laws, the language, the arts, and the social condition of England.

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