by stern suppression of spasmodic outbreaks, William established himself
and his vassals as masters of the land. England ceased to be Anglo-Saxon
and became, altogether politically, and partly in race, Norman-French, a
change more radical and far-reaching than any which it has since undergone.
[Footnote: Vivid though inaccurate pictures of life and events at the time
of the Norman Conquest are given in Bulwer-Lytton's 'Harold' and Charles
Kingsley's 'Hereward the Wake.' Tennyson's tragedy 'Harold' is much better
than either, though more limited in scope.]




CHAPTER II

PERIOD II. THE NORMAN-FRENCH PERIOD. A.D. 1066 TO ABOUT 1350 [Footnote:
Scott's 'Ivanhoe,' the best-known work of fiction dealing with any part of
this period, is interesting, but as a picture of life at the end of the
twelfth century is very misleading. The date assigned to his 'Betrothed,'
one of his less important, novels, is about the same.]


THE NORMANS. The Normans who conquered England were originally members of
the same stock as the 'Danes' who had harried and conquered it in the
preceding centuries--the ancestors of both were bands of Baltic and North
Sea pirates who merely happened to emigrate in different directions; and a
little farther back the Normans were close cousins, in the general Germanic
family, of the Anglo-Saxons themselves. The exploits of this whole race of
Norse sea-kings make one of the most remarkable chapters in the history of
medieval Europe. In the ninth and tenth centuries they mercilessly ravaged
all the coasts not only of the West but of all Europe from the Rhine to the