William, almost the whole of English soil had been divided, on condition of fealty and assistance, among his followers, while the peasantry were bound as serfs. The meanest Norman rose to wealth and power. Here is the ordinance of the great feudal principle of service: We command that all earls, barons, knights, sergeants and freemen be always provided with horses and arms as they ought, and that they be always ready to perform to us their whole service, in manner as they owe it to us of right for their fees and tenements, and as we have appointed to them by the common council of our whole kingdom, and as we have granted to them in fee with right of inheritance.' Of the native proprietors many perished, others were impoverished, and some retained their estates as vassals of Norman lords. To cast off the chains of feudality will be the labor of six centuries. (2.) Introduction of Chivalry,' or Knighthood, a military institution which was prompted by an enthusiastic benevolence and combined with religious ceremonies, the avowed purpose of which was to protect the weak and defend the right. It appears to have had its origin in the military distinction by which certain feudal tenants were bound to serve on horseback, equipped with the coat of mail. He who thus fought, and had been invested with helmet, shield and spear in a solemn manner, wanted nothing more to render him a knight. From the advantages of the mounted above the ordinary combatant, probably arose that farfamed valor and keen thirst for renown which ultimately became the essential qualities of a knightly character. (3.) Introduction of French speech. This became the language of the court and polite literature. As late as the middle of the fourteenth century it was said: 'Children in scole, agenst the usage and manir of all other nations, beeth compelled for to leve hire (their) owne langage, and for to construe hir (their) lessons and hir thynges in Frenche, and so they haveth sethe Normans came first into England.' They made such a point of this that nobles sent their sons to France to preserve them from barbarisms. Students of the universities were obliged to converse either in French or Latin. "Gentilmen children beeth taught to speke Frensche from the tyme they bith rokked in hire cradell . . and uplondish men will likne himself to gentylmen, and fondeth with great besynesse for to speke Frensche to be told of.' 1 From the French cheval, a horse. (4.) Introduction of French poetry. Of course, the Norman, who despised the Saxon, loved none but French ideas and verses. (5.) Expulsion of the English language from literature and culture. No longer or scarcely written, ceasing to be studied in schools or to be spoken in higher life, English became the badge of inferiority and dependence. Thus ox, calf, sheep, pig, deer, are Anglo-Saxon names; while beef, veal, mutton, pork, and venison are Norman-French: because it was the business of the former part of the population to tend these animals while living, but of the latter to eat them when prepared for the feast. The distinction is noticed in his sprightly way by Walter Scott: "Why, how call you those grunting brutes running about on their four legs?" demanded Wamba. "Swine, fool, swine," said the herd; "every fool knows that." "And swine is good Saxon," said the Jester; "but how call you the sow when she is flayed and drawn and quartered, and hung by the heels like a traitor?" "Pork," answered the swineherd. "I am very glad every fool knows that too," said Wamba; "and pork, I think, is good Norman French; and so when the brute lives, and is in charge of a Saxon slave, she goes by her Saxon name; but becomes a Norman, and is called pork, when she is carried to the castle hall to feast among the nobles. What dost thou think of this doctrine, friend Gurth, ha?" "It is but too true doctrine, friend Wamba, however it got into thy fool's pate." "Nay, I can tell you more," said Wamba, in the same tone. "There is old Alderman Ox continues to hold his Saxon epithet while he is under the charge of serfs and barbarians such as thou; but becomes beef, a fiery French gallant, when he arrives before the worshipful jaws that are destined to consume him. Mynheer Calf, too, becomes Monsieur de Veau in the like manner. He is Saxon when he requires tendance, and takes a Norman name when he becomes matter of enjoyment."' Thus does language, as we shall have further occasion to observe, bear the marks and footprints of revolutions,—the ark that rides above the water-floods which sweep away other memorials of vanished ages. (6.) Finally, the establishment of a foreign king, a foreign prelacy, a foreign nobility, the degradation of the conquered, and the division of power and riches among the conquerors. But the absence of internal wars, due to the firm government of foreign kings, will afford time for a varied progress. The stern discipline of these two hundred years will give administrative order and judicial reform. Fusion.-But the great masses always form the race in the end, and generally the genius and the language. If the spirit be not broken, tyranny is but a passing storm which purifies while it devastates. The people remember their native rank and their original independence. At the end of the twelfth century there were Saxon families who had bound themselves by a perpetual vow to wear long beards from father to son in memory of the old national custom. These subjects, trodden and vilified, had the characteristic doggedness, and their predominance was sure. A long time is required to convert a mutual hatred into harmony and peace. Two and a half centuries were needed. Among the various agencies that worked upon the hearts and habits of Norman and Saxon may be reckoned that of the clergy. Never altogether partisan, they constantly became less so. When Anselm came over from his Norman convent to be Archbishop of Canterbury, he told his countrymen plainly that a churchman acknowledged no distinction of race. Ambitious and luxurious as some were, others were humble and self-denying, and stood between the conqueror and the people, a healing influence to mitigate oppression. The wars of the Normans made them more dependent on the Saxons, and common victories served to produce a community of interest and feeling. The Crusades, too, by the predominant sentiment which they inspired, doubtless helped to appease the old animosities. The gradual change in the relation of the two races, as well as an important influence in accelerating that change, is shown by the marriage of Henry the First to a Saxon princess, which soon led to the restoration of the Saxon dynasty in the person of Henry the Second. At present,' says an author in the time of this monarch, as the English and Normans dwell together, and have constantly intermarried, the two nations are so completely mingled together, that, at least as regards freemen, one can scarcely distinguish who is Norman and who English." The loss of Normandy snapped the threads of French connections, and the Normans, by the necessities of their isolation, began to regard England as their home, and the English as their countrymen. Add to these causes the softening influence of time, and we are prepared for that final fusion of the Normans with the mass by which the nation became one again. English, though shunned by cultivation and rank, remained unshaken as the popular tongue. The Norman, too, must learn it, in order to direct his tenants. His Saxon wife speaks it, his children are accustomed to the sound of it. Slowly, by compromise and the necessity of being understood, it prevails,English still in root and sap, though saturated with the vocabulary of Norman-French. But truly to understand the chemistry of the English nation, we must penetrate its soul, learn somewhat of its faculties and feelings, study the man invisible - the under-world of events and forms distinguish the separate moulds in which the entering elements were cast. Celtic. To estimate the advantages of law and order, we must have stood with the stately blue-eyed Briton in his circular hut of timber and reeds, surmounted by a conical roof which served at once to admit daylight and to allow smoke to escape through a hole in the top; have seen a horseman ride in, converse with the inmates, then kick the sides of his steed and make his exit without having alighted; have sat in circle with the guests, each with his block of wood and piece of meat; have seen the whole family lie down to savage dreams around the central fire-place, while the wolf's long howl broke the silence of forest depth or wild fowls screamed across the wilderness of shallow waters; have wandered through their track-ways, careful to hasten home before the setting of the sun should cut us off from our village (a collection of huts amid fens and woods fortified with ramparts and ditches) to become the captive of an enemy or the prey of ravenous beast. There is no property but arms and cattle. War is the favorite occupation. Bronze swords, spears, axes, and chariots with scythes projecting from the axle of the wheels, are the weapons. Every tribe has its own chief or chiefs, who call the common people together and confer with them upon all matters concerning the general welfare. The cran-tara, a stick burnt at the end and dipped in blood, carried by a dumb messenger from hamlet to hamlet, summons the warriors. A brave people, and energetic. Says Tacitus: The Britons willingly furnish recruits to our armies; they pay the taxes without murmuring, and they perform with zeal their duties toward the government, provided they have not to complain of oppression. When they are offended, their resentment is prompt and violent; they may be conquered, but not tamed; they may be led to obedience, but not to servitude.' Would you know their savagery? Imagine them them-as old Celtic story tells-mixing the brains of their slain enemies with lime, and playing with the hard balls they made of them. Such a brainstone is said to have gone through the skull of an Irish chief, who lived afterwards seven years with two brains in his head, always sitting very still, lest in shaking himself he should die. Yet they esteem it infamous for a chieftain to close the door of his house at all, 'lest the stranger should come and behold his contracting soul.' Their dead are buried in mounds. Here vases are discovered, containing their bones and ashes, together with their swords and hatchets, arrow-heads of flint and bronze, and beads of glass and amber, for they believe, after the manner of savages, that things which are useful or pleasing to the living are needed, for pleasure or use, in the shadowy realm: 'Secure beneath his ancient hill The British warrior slumbers still; The bones which reared his stately frame; Still at his side his spear, his bow, As placed two thousand years ago.' The priests of their religion are the Druids, who are so careful lest their secret doctrines be revealed to the uninitiated that they teach their disciples in hidden caves and forest recesses. They are the arbiters of disputes, and the judges of crime. Whoever refuses to submit to their decree is banished from human intercourse. The young resort to them for instruction. They teach the eternal transmigration of souls. They will not worship their gods under roofs. At noon and night, within a circular area, of enormous stones and of vast circumference,' they make their appeals with sacrifices-captives and criminals, or the innocent and fair. When the priest has ripped open the 1 One of these - Stonehenge - may yet be seen standing in mysterious and awful silence on Salisbury Plain. So massive are the pieces, that it was fabled to have been built by giants or magic art: Not less than that huge pile (from some abyss Of mortal power unquestionably sprung,) Whose hoary Diadem of pendant rocks Confines the shrill-voiced whirlwind, round and round Eddying within its vast circumference, On Sarum's naked plain.-Wordsworth. |