of the English people. There is history enough of England, but it is
the history of a foreign government. We may now feel pride in the
strength of our conqueror or pretend claims to descent from William's
companions. We may boast of the empire of Henry II and the prowess of
Richard I, and we may celebrate the organized law and justice, the
scholarship and the architecture, of the early Plantagenet period; but
these things were no more English than the government of India to-day
is Hindu. With Waltheof and Hereward English names disappear from
English history, from the roll of sovereigns, ministers, bishops,
earls, and sheriffs; and their place is taken by names beginning with
"fitz" and distinguished by "de." No William, Thomas, Henry, Geoffrey,
Gilbert, John, Stephen, Richard, or Robert had played any part in
Anglo-Saxon affairs, but they fill the pages of England's history from
the days of Harold to those of Edward I. The English language went
underground, and became the patois of peasants; the thin trickle of
Anglo-Saxon literature dried up, for there was no demand for Anglo-
Saxon among an upper class which wrote Latin and spoke French.
Foreigners ruled and owned the land, and "native" became synonymous
with "serf."

Their common lot, however, gave birth to a common feeling. The Norman
was more alien to the Mercian than had been Northumbrian or West-Saxon,
and rival tribes at last discovered a bond of unity in the impartial
rigour of their masters. The Norman, coming from outside and exempt
from local prejudice, applied the same methods of government and
exploitation to all parts of England, just as Englishmen bring the same
ideas to bear upon all parts of India; and in both cases the steady
pressure of a superimposed civilization tended to obliterate local and
class divisions. Unwittingly Norman and Angevin despotism made an
English nation out of Anglo-Saxon tribes, as English despotism has made