Yet were this the whole story, it might indeed be impossible to explain how the English nation survived the Conquest; still more difficult to show how it could ever put forth the vigour which it exhibited in the thirteenth century.

1

The explanation of the apparent contradiction will, I think, resolve itself, the more the question is studied, into this, that William and his followers did not succeed in destroying the life of the nation. Some institutions he might destroy, others he might render useless; but there still lived on a spirit in the people, which, continually bursting forth in different ways, eventually proved too strong for the conquerors, and forced them to submit to the law of liberty which they had trampled on and despised.

Struggles such as those which obtained the recognition of the laws of Kent,2 or the equally heroic but less successful resistance to the Conqueror at Exeter,3 might give some sign of this spirit, but alone and unaided such movements would profit little. Insurrection was of little use

1 See Hen. Hunt, as above.

2 Thorn (p. 1786, vol. ii. Angl. Hist. Script.).

3 See esp. Ord. Vital., vol. ii. p. 179; Florent. Wigorn., p. 2.

after Harold's death, and the hope for England lay elsewhere.

I consider, then, that the first stage of the rise of the English nation after the Norman Conquest began when they tried to replace the loss of Harold by the person of the Norman King, and to look upon him as the protector against the tyranny of his nobles, and to make him feel the advantages to be gained by friendship with the conquered race.

This, perhaps, may sound startling after what I have said of the personal tyranny of William ; but it is not difficult to explain. In the first place, William's tyranny was entirely different from that of his followers. He was a hard, unsympathising man, whose early life had been passed in the suppression of insurrections in Normandy made by these very nobles, and, thoroughly understanding that lawless people,' he was unable to accommodate himself or his policy to a nation who really knew freedom.

The tyranny of men like Odo of Bayeux and

1 See the account of William's parting advice to his sons as to the methods of government to be followed in England and Normandy, Ord. Vital., vol. iii. p. 230; Chronique de Normandie, p. 120, chap. 1.

Fitz Osborne' was that of men with no sense of responsibility or law. William had forced money from the people; they added insults. He had laughed at the religion of the people; they attacked its morality in a way which William abhorred, and which his friend and confidant Lanfranc denounced.5 From the curia of nobles, which he held three times a year,6 little justice could be gained or hoped for by the English; but it did at least imply so much check on the nobles as deliberation could impose on utterly lawless men. His constitutions were in many cases unjust, in all singularly ineffectual for the wants of the time; but they gave a nominal recognition to the 'laws of King Edward,' and thus might at least supply a document to appeal to when better times. should come.

See Ord. Vital., vol. ii. p. 171.

2 Ibid., 'contumeliis aggravabant.'

Ibid., 'armigeros-incestos raptus facientes vi tuebantur.'

William's personal chastity is praised by William of Malmesbury (Book III. p. 453, vol. ii. ed. Hardy), and is not impeached by any English chronicler.

5 See above, Wilkins' Concilia, vol. i. p. 237.

6 Guill. Malmesb. Vita S. Wulstani, Book I. chap. xii. (Wharton, Anglia Sacra, p. 257). He adds also, with respect to this custom, 'consuetudinem quam successores aliquamdiu tutari, postmodum consenescere permisere.'

There were also three other causes which might tend to draw men like Waltheof and Wulstan round the Norman King. Much as the English owed in the development and maintenance of their freedom to local self-government, the excessive independence of different provinces, and perhaps of different towns, weakened them in the face of a foreign invader. Sir F. Palgrave's assertion that Northumbria never recognised the son of Godwin,' seems hardly borne out by the circumstances of the insurrection against Tostig;2 but that 'the community of interest, imperfect even in prosperous times, had been greatly diminished by adversity,' is a fact which forces itself upon one painfully at every stage of the history of the Conquest. The sudden retreat of Edwin and Morcar from London is mentioned by the Northumbrian chronicler, without the least touch of.

3

1 History of Normandy and England, vol. iii. p. 356.

2

Ang.-Sax. Chron., as in note 8 on page 2. See also Ord. Vital., vol. ii. pp. 120, 121.

3 Palgrave, as above.

Sim. Dunelm. Hist. de Gest. Reg. Ang., p. 195 (ed. and vol. as above). See also, as to the relations of Northumbria and the rest of England, the constant accounts of the invasions of the South of England by the Northern army previous to the time of Cnut. (Ang.Sax. Chron., vol. ii. p. 104 and p. 123.) See, too, the account of

shame, and the struggles at Exeter, Kent, and all the list of insurrections given by Orderic, seem to have had a local origin,' and hardly more than a local purpose.

Finding, therefore, no English centre round which they could gather after the death of Harold, all lovers of law and freedom turned, as the most hopeful substitute, to the King of the Normans. Secondly, that very reverence for law and order which has distinguished Englishmen in all ages, was remarkable in the leaders of the people, then.

I have already remarked on the circumstances of the insurrection against Tostig, and Northumbria, with its half Danish population, seems to have been by far the least orderly part of England. This feeling would naturally centre, in the absence of any other authority, round the King. It would, too, be greatly strengthened by the oath of allegiance. The reverence for an oath seems to have been carried to an almost superstitious extent by the English of that day. Not merely

Siward's invasion of Scotland, Freeman's Norman Conquest, chap. x. See, too, Kemble's Saxons in England, vol. ii. chap. i.; Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. ii. p. 422.

1 Ord. Vital., vol. ii. p. 190–193, ed. Le Prevost.

2 Ibid., vol. ii. p. 261.