arose through the application made to Eadgar for his consent to the
appointment of an abbot. In such a spirit did the English meet an
invasion from the stoutest and best organised soldiery in Europe.
William marched on without let or hindrance, and on his way, the
Lady–the Confessor's widow–surrendered the royal city of Winchester
into his hands. The duke reached the Thames, burnt Southwark, and then
made a détour to cross the river at Wallingford, whence he proceeded
into Hertfordshire, thus cutting off Eadwine and Morkere in London from
their earldoms. The Mercian and Northumbrian leaders being determined to
hold their own at all hazards, retreated northward; and the English
resistance crumbled into pieces. Eadgar, the rival king, with Ealdred,
the archbishop, and all the chief men of London, came out to meet
William, and "bowed to him for need." The Chronicler can only say that
it was very foolish they had not done so before. A people so helpless,
so utterly anarchic, so incapable of united action, deserved to undergo
a severe training from the hard taskmasters of Romance civilisation. The
nation remained, but it remained as a conquered race, to be drilled in
the stern school of the conquerors. For awhile, it is true, William
governed England like an English king; but the constant rebellion and
faithlessness of his new subjects drove him soon to severer measures;
and the great insurrection of 1068, with its results, put the whole
country at his feet in a very different sense from the battle of Senlac.
For a hundred and fifty years, the English people remained a mere race
of chapmen and serfs; and the English language died down meanwhile into
a servile dialect. When the native stock emerges again into the full
light of history, by the absorption of the Norman conquerors in the
reign of John, it reappears with all the super-added culture and
organisation of the Romance nationalities. The Conquest was an
inevitable step in the work of severing England from the barbarous
North, and binding it once more in bonds of union with the civilised