all written on a list of which William is but the foremost. The
largest number come in William's own generation and in the
generations just before and after it. But the breed of England's
adopted children and rulers never died out. The name of William
the Deliverer stands, if not beside that of his namesake the
Conqueror, yet surely alongside of the lawgiver from Anjou. And we
count among the later worthies of England not a few men sprung from
other lands, who did and are doing their work among us, and who, as
statesmen at least, must count as English. As we look along the
whole line, even among the conquering kings and their immediate
instruments, their work never takes the shape of the rooting up of
the earlier institutions of the land. Those institutions are
modified, sometimes silently by the mere growth of events,
sometimes formally and of set purpose. Old institutions get new
names; new institutions are set up alongside of them. But the old
ones are never swept away; they sometimes die out; they are never
abolished. This comes largely of the absorbing and assimilating
power of the island world. But it comes no less of personal
character and personal circumstances, and pre-eminently of the
personal character of the Norman Conqueror and of the circumstances
in which he found himself.


Our special business now is with the personal acts and character of
William, and above all with his acts and character as an English
statesman. But the English reign of William followed on his
earlier Norman reign, and its character was largely the result of
his earlier Norman reign. A man of the highest natural gifts, he
had gone through such a schooling from his childhood upwards as
falls to the lot of few princes. Before he undertook the conquest