A short history of the Norman Conquest of England

by Edward A. Freeman

4. Foreign Wars.—It was also owing to the Norman Conquest that England began to be largely entangled in continental wars. Here again, this might very likely have come about in some other way; but this was the way in which it did come about. As long as Normandy was a separate state lying between England and France, England and France could hardly have any grounds of quarrel. But when England and Normandy had one prince, England got entangled in the quarrels between Normandy and France. England and France became rival powers, and the rivalry went on for ages after Normandy had been conquered by France. Then too both England and Normandy passed to princes who had other great possessions in Gaul, and the chief of these, the duchy of Aquitaine, was kept by the English kings long after the loss of Normandy. Thus, through the Norman Conquest, England became a continental power, mixed up with continental wars and politics, and above all, engaged in a long rivalry with France.

5. Effects on the Kingly Power.—One chief result of the Norman Conquest was greatly to strengthen the power of the kings. The Norman kings kept all the powers, rights, and revenues which the English kings had had, and they added some new ones. A king may be looked on in two ways. He may either be looked on as the head of the state, of which other men are members, or else as the chief lord, with the chief men of the land for his men, holding their lands of him. Both these notions of kingship were known in Europe; both were known in England; but William the Conqueror knew how to use both to the strengthening of the kingly power. Where the king is merely the lord of the chief men, the kingdom is likely to split up into separate principalities, as happened both in Germany and in Gaul. William took care that this should not happen in England by making his great law which made every man the man of the king. But when this point was once secured, it added greatly to the king’s power that he should be personal lord as well as chief of the state, and that all men should hold their lands of him. The Norman kings were thus able to levy the old taxes as heads of the state, and also to raise money in various ways off the lands which were held of them. They could, like the old kings, call the whole nation to war, and they could further call on the men who held lands of them either to do military service in their own persons or to pay money to be let off. Thus the king could have at pleasure either a national army, or a feudal army, that is an army of men who did military service for their fiefs, or lastly an army of hired mercenaries. And the kings made use of all three as suited them. Another thing also happened. In the older notion, kingship was an office, the highest office, an office bestowed by the nation, though commonly bestowed on the descendants of former kings. But now kingship came to be looked on more and more as a possession, and it was deemed that it ought to pass, like any other possession, according to the strict rules of inheritance. Thus the crown became more and more hereditary and less and less elective. For several reigns after the Norman Conquest, things so turned out that strict hereditary succession could not be observed. Still, from the time of the Conquest, the tendency was in favour of strict hereditary succession, and it became the rule in the long run.

6. Effects on the Constitution and Administration.—We have already seen that both William the Conqueror and the Norman kings after him made very few direct changes in the law. Nor did they make many formal changes in government and administration. They destroyed no old institutions or offices, but they set up some new ones by the side of the old. And of these sometimes the old lived on till later times, and sometimes the new. And sometimes old things got new names, which might make us think that more change happened than really did. And in this case again sometimes the old names lived on and sometimes the new. Thus the Normans called the shire the county, and the king’s chief officer in it, the sheriff, they called the viscount. Now we use the word county oftener than the word shire; but the sheriff is never called viscount, a word which has got another meaning. So, in the greatest case of all, the King is still called King by his Old-English name, but the assembly of the nation, the Witenagemót or Meeting of the Wise Men, is called a Parliament. But this is simply because the wise men spoke or parleyed with the king, as we read before that King William had “very deep speech with his Wise Men” before he ordered the great survey. What is much more important than the change of name is that the assembly has quite changed its constitution. And yet it is truly the same assembly going on; there has been no sudden break; changes have been made bit by bit; but we have never been without a national assembly of some kind, and there never was any time when one kind of assembly was abolished and another kind put in its stead. The greatest change that ever happened in a short time was that, in the twenty-one years of the Conqueror’s reign, an assembly which was almost wholly an assembly of Englishmen changed into one which was almost wholly an assembly of Normans. But even this change was not made all at once. There was no time when Englishmen as a body were turned out, and Normans as a body put in. Only, as the Englishmen who held great offices died or lost them one by one, Normans and other strangers were put in their places one by one. Thus there came a great change in the spirit and working of the assembly; but there was little or no immediate change in its form. And so it was in every thing else. Without any sudden change, without ever abolishing old things and setting up new ones, new ideas came in and practically made great changes in things which were hardly at all changed in form. It is a mistake to think that our Old-English institutions were ever abolished and new Norman institutions set up in their stead. But it is quite true that our Old-English institutions were greatly changed, bit by bit, by new ways of thinking and doing brought over from Normandy.

7. Effects of the Conqueror’s Personal Character.—Besides all other more general causes, there can be no doubt that the personal character of William himself had a great effect on the whole later course of English history. As William had no love for oppression for its own sake, so neither had he any love for change for its own sake. He saw that, without making any violent changes in English law, he could get to himself as much power as he could wish for. Both he and the kings for some time after him were practically despots, kings, that is, who did according to their own will. But they did according to their own will, because they kept on all the old forms of freedom; so, in after times, as the kings grew weaker and the nation grew stronger, life could be put again into the forms, and the old freedom could be won back again. A smaller man than William, one less strong and wise, would most likely have changed a great deal more. And by so doing he would have raised far more opposition, and would have done far more mischief in the long run. William’s whole position was that he was lawful King of the English, reigning according to English law. But a smaller man than William would hardly have been able at once outwardly to keep that position, and at the same time really to do in all things as he thought fit. It is largely owing to William’s wisdom that there was no violent change, no sudden break, but that the general system of things went on as before, allowing this and that to be changed bit by bit in after times, as change was found to be needed.

8. Relations of Normans and Englishmen.—It followed almost necessarily from the peculiar nature of William’s conquest that in no conquest did the conquerors and the conquered sooner join together into one people. No doubt the fact that Normans and English were after all kindred nations had something to do with this; but the union could hardly have been made so speedily and so thoroughly, if it had not been for the peculiar character of the conquest made under the form of law. William took a great deal of land from Englishmen and gave it to Normans; but every Norman to whom he gave land had in some sort to become an Englishman in order to hold it. He held it from the King of the English according to the law of England; he stepped exactly into the place of the Englishman who had held the land before him; he took his rights, his powers, his burthens, whatever they might be, neither more nor less. He had to obey and to administer English law, to hold English offices, to adapt himself in endless ways to the customs of the land in which he found himself. And, except in the case of the very greatest nobles, there were men of Old-English birth by his side, holding their lands as he held his, holding offices, attending in assemblies, acting with him in every way as members of the same political body. The son of the Norman settler, born in the land, often the son of an English mother, soon came to feel himself more English than Norman. So the two nations were soon mingled together, so soon that a writer a hundred years after the Conquest could say that, among freemen, it was impossible to say who was English and who was Norman by descent. Of course in thus mixing together, the two nations influenced one another; each learned and borrowed something from the other. The English did not become Normans; the Normans did become Englishmen; but the Normans, in becoming Englishmen, greatly influenced the English nation, and brought in many ways of thinking and doing which had not been known in England before.

9. Effects of the Conquest on Language.—Above all things, this took place in the matter of language. In this we carry about us to this day the most speaking signs of the Norman Conquest. If the Norman Conquest had never happened, the English tongue would doubtless have greatly changed in the course of eight hundred years, just as the other tongues of Europe have greatly changed in that time. But it could not have changed in the same way or the same degree. No other European tongue has changed in exactly the same way, because no other tongue has had the same causes of change brought to bear on it. Our own Old-English tongue, as it was spoken when the Normans came, was a pure Teutonic tongue, that is, it was as nearly pure as any tongue ever is; for there is no tongue which has not borrowed some words from others. So we had, since we came into Britain, picked up a few words from the Welsh, and more from the Latin. But these were simply names of things which we knew nothing about till we came hither, foreign things which we called by foreign names. And we had kept our grammar, and what grammarians call the inflexions, that is, the forms and endings of words, quite untouched. The Normans, on the other hand, after their settlement in Gaul, had quite forgotten their old Danish tongue, allied to the English, and, when they came to England, they all spoke French. French is the Romance tongue of Northern Gaul, that is, the tongue which grew up there as the Latin tongue lost its old form, and a good many Teutonic words crept in. The effect of the Norman Conquest on our tongue has been twofold. We have lost nearly all our inflexions; we should very likely have lost most of them if there had been no Norman Conquest, for the other Teutonic tongues have all lost some or all of their inflexions; but the Norman Conquest made this work begin sooner and go on quicker. Then we borrowed a vast number of French words, many of them words which we did not want at all, names of things which already had English names. But this happened very gradually. For some while the two languages, French and English, were spoken side by side without greatly affecting one another. French was the polite speech, Latin the learned speech, English the speech of the people; but for a hundred and fifty years after the Conquest, French was never used in public documents. Before long the Normans in England learned to speak English, and they seem to have done so commonly by the end of the twelfth century, though of course they could speak French as well. Then there came in a French, as distinguished from a Norman influence; French came in as a fashion, and it was not till the fourteenth century that English quite won the day; and when it came in, it had lost many of its inflexions, and borrowed very many French words. And since this we have gone on taking in new words from French, Latin, and other tongues, because we have lost the habit of making new words in our own tongue. All these later changes are not direct effects of the Norman Conquest; still they are effects. The French fashion could never have set in so strongly if the French tongue had not been already brought in by the Normans.

10. Effects of the Conquest on Learning and Literature.—There can be no doubt that in all matters of learning the Norman Conquest caused a great immediate advance in England. There had in earlier times been more than one learned period in England; but the Danish wars had thrown things back, and it does not seem that Edward, with all his love for strangers, did much to encourage foreign scholars. But with the coming of William this changed at once. Lanfranc and Anselm for instance, the first archbishops of Canterbury after the Conquest, were the greatest scholars of their time. Men of learning and science of all kinds came to England, and men in England, both of Norman and of English blood, took to learning and science. We have therefore during the twelfth century a large stock of good writers who were born or who lived in England. But they wrote in Latin, as was usual then and long after with learned men throughout western Europe; they therefore did nothing for the encouragement of a native literature. Still men did not leave off writing in English; the English Chronicle goes on during the first half of the twelfth century, and small pieces, chiefly religious, were still written. But the Norman Conquest had the effect of thrusting down English literature into a lower place; even when it was commonly spoken, it ceased to be either a learned or a polite tongue. On the other hand, the newly-born French literature took great root in England. It was about the time of the Conquest that men in Northern Gaul found out that the French tongue which they talked had become so different from the Latin which they wrote that it would be possible to write in French as well as to speak it. The oldest French books, like the oldest books of most languages, are in verse, and this new French verse flourished greatly among the Normans, both in Normandy and in England. Thus Wace wrote the story of the Norman dukes, and specially of the Conquest of England. Others, who were settled in England and began to love their new land, wrote books of English and British history and legend. Thus, for a long time after the Conquest, there was much writing going on in England in all three languages. Many French writings were translated into English, and some English writings into French. But all this, though it showed how men’s minds were at work, kept down the real tongue and the real literature of the land for several ages.

11. Effects of the Conquest on Art.—In those days there was not much art in Western Europe, save the art of building. Books were illuminated, and there was both painting and sculpture in churches, but they were what would be now thought very rude work. Both in Germany and in England the art of embroidery seems to have flourished; but that is hardly art in any high sense. But in the art of building the Norman Conquest of England marks a great stage. When we speak of building, we have mainly to do with churches and castles; houses were commonly of wood, as indeed churches and castles often were also. In the eleventh century men still built throughout Christendom with round arches, after the manner of the old Romans. And in Western Europe they built everywhere very much after the same pattern, one which came from Italy. But in the eleventh century men began to strike out new ways in architecture, and, without wholly forsaking the old Roman models with their round arches, they devised new local styles in different parts. Thus one form of what is called Romanesque architecture arose in Italy, another in Southern Gaul, another in Northern Gaul, and so on. The Normans of William’s day were great builders, and the Romanesque style of Northern Gaul grew up chiefly in Normandy, and is commonly called Norman. In Edward’s day this new style came into England among other Norman fashions, and under William it took firmer root. The new prelates despised the English churches as too small, and they rebuilt them on a greater scale, and of course in the new style. For a while the old style which England had in common with the rest of Western Europe was still used in smaller buildings; but by the end of the eleventh century the Norman style had taken full root in England, and in the twelfth century it grew much richer and lighter. And as stone building came more and more into use, the style spread to houses and other buildings.

12. Effects of the Conquest on Warfare.—Military architecture, the building of castles and other strong places, is in some sort a part of the history of the building art, no less than the building of churches and houses. Still it has a character and a history of its own. In this matter, and in all matters which had to do with warfare, the Norman Conquest made the greatest change of all. In England men could fence in a town with walls, but they had no strong castles. Their strong places were great mounds with a wooden defence on the top. But the Normans brought in the fashion of building castles, as we have seen in the history of Edward’s reign. They sometimes built lighter keeps on the old mounds; sometimes they built massive strong towers; and in either case they were fond of surrounding them with deep ditches. These were the types which the Normans brought in, and they grew into the elaborate castles of later times. Thus the land was filled with castles, and warfare took mainly the form of attacking and besieging them. After the Norman Conquest we hear for a long time much more of sieges, and much less of battles in the open field, while in the Danish wars we heard much more of battles than of sieges. The Normans also brought their own way of fighting into England, and made great changes in English armies. Before the Conquest we had no horsemen and very few archers; from this time we have both, and the old array goes out of use. Yet we sometimes read of the Norman knights getting down from their horses and fighting with swords or axes in Old-English fashion. And, as the archers came to be the strongest part of an English army, and that which was thought specially English, it was in one way a going back to the old state of things. The weapon was changed; but, in times when horsemen were most thought of, a stout body of foot was still the strength of an English army.

13. Summary.—Thus we see the special way in which the Norman Conquest, owing to its own special nature and to the personal character of William, acted upon England. It did not destroy or abolish our old laws or institutions; but by influencing, it gradually changed, and in the end preserved. And in this way the Conquest worked in the end for good. We have really kept a more direct connexion with the oldest times, without any sudden break or change, than those kindred nations which have never in the same way been conquered by strangers. There has been great change, but it has been all bit by bit, with no general upsetting at any particular time. We will now, in our last chapter, see a little more particularly how these causes worked in the later history of England.