Observe—that I call up these modern writers and their language, out of their turn as may seem to you, only that I may plant more distinctly in your thought the old incidents to which their words relate. It is as if I were speaking to you of some long-gone line of ancestors, and on a sudden should call up some delicate blond child and say—This one is in the line of direct descent; she bears the same old name, she murmurs the same old tunes; and this shimmer of gold in her hair is what shone on the heads of the good Saxon foreparents.
William the Norman.
We now come to a date to be remembered, and in the neighborhood of which our first morning’s talk will come to an end. It is the date of the Norman Conquest—1066—that being the year of the Battle of Hastings, when the brave Harold, last of the Saxon kings went down, shot through the eye; and the lithe, clean-faced, smirking William of Normandy “gat him” the throne of England. These new-comers were not far-away cousins of our Saxon and Danish forefathers; only so recently as the reign of Alfred had they taken permanent foothold in that pleasant Norman country.
But they have not brought the Norse speech of the old home land with them: they have taken to a Frankish language—we will call it Norman French—which is thenceforth to blend with the Saxonism of Alfred, until two centuries or more later, our own mother English—the English of Chaucer and of Shakespeare—is evolved out of the union. Not only a new tongue, do these conquerors bring with them, but madrigals and ballads and rhyming histories; they have great contempt for the stolid, lazy-going Latin records of the Saxon Chroniclers; they love a song better. In the very face of the armies at Hastings, their great minstrel Taillefer had lifted up his voice to chant the glories of Roland, about which all the histories of the time will tell you.
It was a new civilization (not altogether Christian) out-topping the old. These Normans knew more of war—knew more of courts—knew more of affairs. They loved money and they loved conquest. To love one in those days, was to love the other. King William swept the monasteries clean of those ignorant priests who had dozed there, from the time of Alfred, and put in Norman Monks with nicely clipped hair, who could construe Latin after latest Norman rules. He new parcelled the lands, and gave estates to those who could hold and manage them. It was as if a new, sharp eager man of business had on a sudden come to the handling of some old sleepily conducted counting-room; he cuts off the useless heads; he squares the books; he stops waste; pity or tenderness have no hearing in his shop.
I mentioned not far back an old Saxon Chronicle, which all down the years, from shortly after Beda’s day, had been kept alive—sometimes under the hands of one monastery, sometimes of another; here is what its Saxon Scribe of the eleventh century says of this new-come and conquering Norman King: It is good Saxon history, and in good Saxon style:—
“King William was a very wise man, and very rich, more worshipful and strong than any of his foregangers. He was mild to good men who loved God; and stark beyond all bounds to those who withsaid his will. He had Earls in his bonds who had done against his will; Bishops he set off their bishoprics; Abbots off their abbotries, and thanes in prison. By his cunning he was so thoroughly acquainted with England, that there is not a hide of land of which he did not know, both who had it, and what was its worth. He planted a great preserve for deer, and he laid down laws therewith, that whoever should slay hart or hind should be blinded. He forbade the harts and also the boars to be killed. As greatly did he love the tall deer as if he were their father.… He took from his subjects many marks of gold, and many hundred pounds of silver; and that he took—some by right, and some by mickle might for very little need. He had fallen into avarice; and greediness he loved withal. Among other things is not to be forgotten the good peace that he made in this land; so that a man who had any confidence in himself might go over his realm, with his bosom full of gold, unhurt. Nor durst any man slay another man had he done ever so great evil to the other.… Brytland (Wales) was in his power, and he therein wrought castles, and completely ruled over that race of men.… Certainly in his time men had great hardship, and very many injuries.… His rich men moaned, and the poor men murmured; but he was so hard that he recked not the hatred of them all. For it was need they should follow the King’s will, if they wished to live, or to have lands or goods. Alas, that any man should be so moody, and should so puff up himself, and think himself above all other men! May Almighty God show mercy to his soul, and grant him forgiveness of his sins.”
There are other contemporary Anglo-Saxon annalists, and there are the rhyming chroniclers of Norman blood, who put a better color upon the qualities of King William; but I think there is no one of them, who even in moments of rhetorical exaltation, thinks of putting William’s sense of justice, or his kindness of heart, before his greed or his self-love.