It was a great result of the Norman government in England that it associated our insular and retired dominion with that nobler theatre of human affairs, the Continent of Europe. In Normandy we trace the first footings of our national power; the English Sovereign, now a prince of France, ere long on the French soil vied in magnitude of territory with his paramount Lord, the Monarch of France. Such a permanent connexion could not fail to produce a conformity in manners; what was passing among our closest neighbours, rivals or associates, was reflected in the old Saxon land which had lost its nationality.
[1] Speed, 441. This was said to “the Conqueror,” and this Abbot of St. Alban’s paid dearly for the patriotism which had then become treason.
[2] A circumstance which Milton has recorded.
[3] Our great lawyers probably imagined that the honour of the country is implicated in the title usually accorded to William the Norman; Spelman, the great antiquary, and Blackstone, the historian and the expounder of our laws, have absolutely explained away the assumed title of “the Conqueror” to a mere technical feudal term of “Conquestor, or acquirer of any estate out of the common course of inheritance.” The first purchaser (that is, he who brought the estate into the family which at present owns it) was styled “the Conqueror,” and such is still the proper phrase in the law of Scotland. Ritson is indignant at what he calls “a pitiful forensic quibble.”
But another great lawyer and lord chancellor, the sedate Whitelocke, positively asserts that “William only conquered Harold and his army; for he never was, nor pretended to be, the conqueror of England, although the sycophant monks of the time gave him that title.”—Whitelocke’s “Hist. of England,” 33.
In a charter, granting certain lands for the church of St. Paul’s, which Stowe has translated from the record in the Tower, William denominates himself, “by the grace of God, King of Englishmen” (Rex Anglorum), and addresses it “to all his well-beloved French and English people, greeting.”—Stowe’s “Survey of London,” 326, Edit. 1603. Did William on any occasion declare that he was “the Conqueror” as well as the sovereign of England? When William attempted to learn the Saxon language, it is obvious that he did not desire to remind his new subjects that he ruled as Voltaire sang of his hero,—
| —————————qui regna sur la France, Par droit de Conquête et par droit de Naissance. |
[4] The final history of these citadels may illustrate that verse of Goldsmith which reminds us—
“To fly from PETTY TYRANTS—to the Throne!”