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The great
earldoms under
Cnut and
Eadward the
Confessor.

removed from that of the great feudatories of the Continent. Under Eadward the Martyr the condition of England was not unlike that of France under Charles the Bald. The great earls, or ealdormen of provinces, were forming a separate order in the State inimical alike to the supremacy of the king and the liberty of their fellow subjects. Cnut divided the kingdom into four great earldoms or duchies; and the same policy was continued by Eadward the Confessor, in whose reign the whole land seems to have been divided among five earls, three of them being Earl Godwine and his sons Harold and Tostig. The power and statesmanship of William the Norman prevented the threatened disintegration of the kingdom.

CHAPTER II.

THE NORMAN CONQUEST.

cession to the crown.

ON the death of Eadward the Confessor, (5th of Disputed sucJanuary, 1066,) the succession to the crown was disputed. The heir of the house of Cerdic, Eadgar the Ætheling, grand-nephew of the late king, was not only of tender age, but, as his after-life showed, of feeble character and mediocre intellect. The political exigencies of the kingdom imperatively demanded an able and resolute man as its head. King Eadward on his death-bed had recommended as his successor his brother-in-law, Earl Earl Harold: Harold. The earl was the most able general and statesman of the time, already exercising a quasi-royal authority through his own personal influence and the vast possessions of the Godwine family, and, though lacking the blood of Cerdic in his veins, was allied to the English royal house by affinity, and by blood to the Danish house which had so lately occupied the throne. The Witan, who were at this time assembled in their ordinary mid-winter session, approving of Eadward's recommendation, elected Earl Harold King of the English, and he was forthwith anointed and crowned by Ealdred, Archbishop of York.

But there was another competitor for the crown in the

1 Harold's mother, Gytha, was a sister of Ulf Jarl and first cousin once removed of King Cnut.-Thorpe's Lappenberg, Ang. Sax. pp. 280, 370.

Flor. Wigorn. 1066. Quo [Eadwardo] tumulato, Subregulus Haroldus, Godwini Ducis filius, quem Rex ante decessionem regni successorem elegerat, a totius Angliae primatibus ad regale culmen electus, die eodem ab Aldredo Eboracensi Archiepiscopo in Regem est honorificè consecratus.'

elected and

crowned king.

William, Duke of Normandy.

The kingship elective.

The Conquest.

14 Oct. 1066.

William elected

and crowned King of the English.'

person of William, Duke of Normandy, who was cousin to Eadward the Confessor through that king's mother, Emma of Normandy, and now claimed the throne under an alleged earlier appointment of his late kinsman. If such appointment or promise had indeed been made, which seems probable, it was superseded by the last expression of King Eadward's wishes. Under any circumstances it could merely amount to a recommendation to the Witan. A king of the English had never possessed a constitutional right to bequeath his kingdom like a private estate. The right of electing a king resided in the Witan alone, acting on behalf of the whole nation. Their choice, it is true, had hitherto, when freely exercised, been restricted to the members of the royal house; but failing an eligible descendant of Cerdic, the choice of the nation was unlimited.

William, however, professed to be merely asserting his legal right. Having secured the moral and religious support of the papal benediction, which the Roman See in its anxiety to reduce the independence of the National English Church was most ready to bestow, and leading a large army of Normans and other foreigners, all inured to warfare and eager for booty, William landed in England to decide by the fate of arms between himself and the 'usurper' Harold. At the decisive battle of Senlac the Normans were victorious, Harold, his brothers, and the flower of the English thegnhood being left dead on the field. Although, on the news of Harold's death, the Londoners at once chose Eadgar Ætheling for king, disunion and the lack of effective organization prevented any successful resistance to the onward march of the invaders. William had as yet conquered but a very small portion of the kingdom, but such was the panic of the nation, that he was elected king by the Witan and crowned at West

1 See Freeman, Norm. Conq. ii. 296–304.

In

Theoretically a

minster on Christmas Day, 1066, by the same Archbishop
Ealdred who had crowned the unfortunate Harold.
conformity with his original pretensions, he assumed the
title of King of the English,' and entered into the usual
compact with the nation in the ancient coronation oath.
William evidently began with the intention of reigning
as the appointed heir of Eadward and the lawful suc- king.
cessor of the English kings. In that character he was
obliged to respect the laws and customs of the kingdom.
Theoretically he continued to govern as a constitutional
king, though practically in defiance of everything but his

constitutional

own wishes. The continuity of the English constitution Continuity of was not broken by the Norman conquest. That event the constitution. ought to be regarded not as a fresh starting-point, but as 'the great turning-point' in the history of the English nation. The laws, with a few changes in detail, remained the same; the language of public documents remained the same; the powers which were vested in King William and his Witan remained constitutionally the same.'1

race.

The infusion of Norman blood has been considered The Norman extensive enough to count as one of the four chief elements of the present English nation; but it was still only an infusion. In the course of little more than a century it became absorbed, as the smaller Celtic and larger Danish elements had been absorbed previously, in the predominant English nationality. The fusion was doubtless facilitated by the common Teutonic descent of the two peoples. The Normans were in fact Northmen, who, instead of coming direct from Scandinavia, had sojourned for a century and a half in a French home. While retaining much of the Norse character, they had acquired, during the interval, the language and civilization of the Romanized Gauls and Franks, developing in the process a brilliant nationality distinct alike from the

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Effects of the
Conquest.

nationality of their origin and of their new home. The conquerors, moreover, were by no means utter strangers to the people whom they subdued. The vicinity of so remarkable a nation as the Normans had early begun to produce an influence upon the public mind of England, and had to some extent prepared the way for their ultimate supremacy. 'Before the Conquest, English princes received their education in Normandy. English sees and English estates were bestowed on Normans. The French of Normandy was familiarly spoken in the palace of Westminster. The court of Rouen seems to have been to the court of Eadward the Confessor what the court of Versailles long afterwards was to the court of Charles the Second.' 1

The immediate changes which the Conquest introduced were undoubtedly great, but they were practical rather than formal. The power of the crown was vastly increased. As the government became more centralized, local self-government, the essential characteristic of our Teutonic constitution, was for a time depressed; but only to arise again later on, when the nobles and people became united against the tyranny of the crown. The social aspect of England was enormously changed. The old dynasty had been supplanted by an alien family. The old aristocracy was superseded by a new nobility. It is true that the conquest '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

Macaulay, Hist. Eng. i. 10.

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