Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading

by George Park Fisher

The NORMAN INVASION.—The duchy of Normandy had become very strong and prosperous, and, under the French-speaking Northmen, or Normans, had grown to be one of the principal states in Western Europe. Edward, king of England, surnamed the Confessor, or Saint (1042-1066) had been brought up in Normandy, and favored his own Norman friends by lavish gifts of honors and offices. The party opposed to the foreigners was led by Godwin, earl of the West Saxons. After being once banished, he returned in arms; and Norman knights and priests were glad to escape from the country. Edward's wife was Edith, daughter of Godwin. They had no children; and on his death-bed he recommended that Earl Harold, the son of Godwin, should be his successor. The Normans claimed that he had promised that their duke, William, should reign after him. It was said that Harold himself, on a visit to William, had, either willingly or unwillingly, sworn to give him his support. Edward, who was devout in his ways, though a negligent ruler, was buried in the monastery called Westminster, which he had built, and which was the precursor of the magnificent church bearing the same name that was built afterwards by King Henry III. Harold was now crowned. Duke William, full of wrath, appealed to the sword; and, under the influence of the archdeacon Hildebrand, Pope Alexander II. took his side, and sanctioned his enterprise of conquest. At the same time the north of England was invaded by the king of the Norwegians, a man of gigantic stature, named Hardrada. The Norman invaders landed without resistance on the shore of Sussex, on the 28th of September, 1066, and occupied Hastings. Harold encamped on the heights of Senlac. On the 14th of October the great battle took place in which the Normans were completely victorious. The English stood on a hill in a compact mass, with their shields in front and a palisade before them. They repulsed the Norman charges. But the Normans pretended to retreat. This moved the Saxons to break their array in order to pursue. The Normans then turned back, and rushed through the palisade in a fierce onset. An arrow pierced the eye of Harold, and he was cut to pieces by four French knights. The Norman duke, William the Conqueror, was crowned king on Christmas Day; but it was four years before he overcame all resistance, and got full control over the country. The largest estates and principal offices in England he allotted to Normans and other foreigners. The crown of William was handed down to his descendants, and gradually the conquerors and the conquered became mingled together as one people.

EFFECT OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST.

CHARACTER OF THE SAXONS.—The Saxons at the time of the Conquest were a strong and hardy race, hospitable, and fond of good cheer, which was apt to run into gluttony and revels. Their dwellings were poor, compared with those of the better class of Normans. They were enthusiastic in out-door sports, such as wrestling and hunting. They fought on foot, armed with the shield and axe. The common soldier, however, often had no better weapon than a fork or a sharpened stick. The ordeals in vogue, as a test of guilt and innocence when one was accused of a crime, were, plunging the arm into boiling water, or holding a hot iron in the hand for three paces. London was fast growing to be the chief town, and eclipsing Winchester, the old Saxon capital. A king like Alfred, and scholars like Bede and Alcuin, not to speak of old chronicles and ballads, show that literature was valued; but the Danish invasions in Northumberland, where schools and letters had flourished, did much to blight the beginnings of literary progress.

THE NORMAN SPIRIT AND INFLUENCE.—The tapestry at Bayeux represents in a series of pictures the course of the Norman conquest. There we see the costume of the combatants. The Norman gentlemen were mounted, and fought with lance and sword. Of their bravery and military skill, their success affords abundant proof. Although the Normans were victors and masters in England, not only was the conquest gradual, but the result of it was the amalgamation of the one people with the other. The very title of conqueror, attached to William, was a legal term (conquaestor), and meant purchaser or acquirer. There was an observance of legal forms in the establishment and administration of his government. The folkland, or the public land, was appropriated by him, and became crown-land. So all the land of the English was considered to be forfeited, and estates were given out liberally to Norman gentlemen. The nobility became mainly Norman, and the same was true of the ecclesiastics and other great officers. All the land was held as a grant from the king. In 1085 the making of Domesday was decreed, which was a complete statistical survey of all the estates and property in England. The object was to furnish a basis for taxation. The Domesday Book is one of the most curious and valuable monuments of English history. Among the changes in law made by William was the introduction of the Norman wager of battle, or the duel, by the side of the Saxon methods of ordeal described above. In most of the changes, there was not so much an uprooting as a great transformation of former rules and customs.

ENGLAND AND THE CONTINENT.—One of the most important results of the Norman Conquest was the bringing of England into much more intimate relations with the continent. The horizon of English thought and life was widened. One incidental consequence was the closer connection of the English Church with the Papacy. Foreign ecclesiastics, some of them men of eminence and of learning, were brought in. It was this connection with the continent that led England to take so important a part in the Crusades.

THEN NORMAN GOVERNMENT.—As regards feudalism, one vital feature of it—the holding of land by a military tenure, or on condition of military service—was reduced to a system by the conquest. But William took care not to be overshadowed or endangered by his great vassals. He levied taxes on all, and maintained the place of lord of all his subjects. He was king of the English, and sovereign lord of the Norman nobles. He summoned to the Witan, or Great Assembly, those whom he chose to call. This summons, and the right to receive it, became the foundation of the Peerage. Out of the old Saxon Witan, there grew in this way the House of Lords. The lower orders, when summoned at all, were summoned in a mass; afterwards we shall find that they were called by representatives; and, in—the end, when the privilege of appearing in this way was converted into a right, the House of Commons came into being. In like manner, the King's Court gradually came to be, in the room of the Assembly itself, a judicial and governing Committee of the Assembly. From this body of the king's immediate counselors emerged in time the Privy Council and the Courts of Law. Out of the Privy Council grew, in modern times, the Cabinet, composed of what are really "those privy councilors who are specially summoned." Committees of the National Assembly, in the course of English history, acquired "separate being and separate powers, as the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of the government." Thus the English Constitution is the product of a steady growth.

MINGLING OF BLOOD AND LANGUAGES.—A multitude of Normans emigrated into England, especially to London. The Normans became Englishmen, as a natural consequence. But they affected the spirit and manners of the people by whom they were absorbed. By opening avenues for French influence, chivalry, with its peculiar ideas and ways, was brought into England. But it must never be forgotten that the Normans were kinsfolk of the Saxons. Both conquerors and conquered were Teutons. The conquest was very different, in this particular, from what the conquest of Germany by France, or of France by Germany, would be. The French language which the Normans spoke had been acquired by them in their adopted home across the channel. To this source the Latin element, or words of Latin etymology, in our English tongue is mainly due. The loss of the old Saxon inflections is another marked change; but this is not due, to so large an extent, solely to the influence of Norman speech. But the English language continued to be essentially Teutonic in its structure. For a long time the two tongues lived side by side. At the end of the twelfth century, if French was the language of polite intercourse, English was the language of common conversation and of popular writings. Learned men spoke, or could speak, and they wrote, in Latin.

NORMAN BUILDINGS.—The Normans built the cathedrals and castles. Down to the eleventh century, the Romanesque, or "round-arched" architecture, derived from Italy, had been the one prevalent style in Western Europe. In the modification of it, called the Norman style, we find the round arch associated with massive piers and narrow windows. Durham cathedral is an example of the Norman Romanesque type of building. The Norman conquerors covered England with castles, of which the White Tower of London, built by William, is a noted specimen. Sometimes they were square, and sometimes polygonal; but, except in the palaces of the kings, they afforded little room for artistic beauty of form or decoration. They were erected as fortresses, and were regarded by the people with execration as strongholds of oppression.

II. THE NORMANS IN ITALY AND SICILY.

THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF NAPLES AND SICILY.—Early in the eleventh century, knights from Normandy wandered into Southern Italy, and gave their aid to different states in battle against the Greeks and Saracens. In 1027 the ruler of Naples gave them a fertile district, where they built the city of Aversa. By the reports of their victories and good fortune, troops of pilgrims and warriors were attracted to join them. The valiant sons of the old count, Tancred of Hauteville, were among the number. They supported the Greek viceroy in an attack on the Arabs in Sicily; but, on his failing duly to reward them, they turned against him, and conquered Apulia for themselves. Under Robert Guiscard (1057-1085), they made themselves masters of all Southern Italy. They had already defeated Pope Leo IX. at Civitella, and received from him as fiefs their present and anticipated conquests in Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily. Twelve years after, Robert, with the help of his brother Roger, wrested Sicily, with its capital, Palermo, from the Saracens, who were divided among themselves (1072). The seaports of Otranto and Bari were also taken by Robert. He even entered on the grand scheme of conquering the Byzantine Empire, but his death frustrated this endeavor. His nephew Roger II. (1130-1154) took the remaining possessions of the Greeks in Southern Italy and Sicily, united them in the kingdom of Naples and Sicily, and received from the Pope the title of king. In this kingdom the feudal system was established, and trade and industry flourished. In culture and prosperity it surpassed all the other Italian communities. At Salerno was a famous school of medicine and natural science; at Amalfi and Naples were schools of law. But the Norman nobility was corrupted and enervated by the luxury of the South, and by the influence of Mohammedan customs, and modes of thought. During fifty-six years Roger and his two successors, William the Bad (1154-1166) and William the Good (1166-1189), ruled this flourishing kingdom, which then fell by inheritance to the Hohenstaufen German princes. On the mainland and in Sicily, numerous stately buildings and ruined castles and towers point back to the romantic period of Norman rule.