THE LATER HISTORY.
=1. The Norman Kings.=--William Rufus began his reign as a Norman king
of England only; Robert held the duchy of Normandy. But William got,
first part and then the whole, of Normandy into his hands, and he
afterwards warred with France. Here then is the beginning of our French
wars, wars which the French writers from the very beginning speak of as
wars of the English against the French. William Rufus’ reign was one of
great oppression and wrong, and in his time, under his minister Randolf
Flambard, the new customs about the holding of land got put into a
definite shape. At his death in 1100 Normandy and England were again
separated for a while, for Robert again took his duchy, while Henry was
chosen King of the English. As he was the only one of the Conqueror’s
children who was in any sense English, the native English were strongly
for him, and helped him to keep the crown, when the Normans again
wished for Robert. This is the last time that we hear of the English
and Normans in England acting as separate classes of people. The reign
of Henry, which lasted till 1135, was the time in which the two races
were gradually joined together. Henry also pleased the English by
marrying Edith or Matilda, the daughter of Malcolm King of Scots and
Margaret the sister of the Ætheling Edgar. Thus his children sprang in
the female line from the old kings. Then Robert ruled Normandy so ill
that many of his own people wished to get rid of him; so in 1106 King
Henry won the duchy at the battle of Tinchebrai. This was just forty
years after William the Great had won England, and men began to say
that things were now turned round. Henry’s son, William the Ætheling,
died before him. He therefore wished his crown to go to his daughter
Matilda, the widow of the Emperor Henry the Fifth, whom he married to
Count Geoffrey of Anjou. For the rule to pass to a woman was a strange
thing both in England and in Normandy. So when Henry died, men chose
his sister’s son Stephen of Blois. Stephen was much loved by men of all
races, but he had not strength to reign in those times. The friends of
the Empress rose up against him, and through the whole of Stephen’s
days, till 1154, there was such a time as England never saw before
or since. All law vanished, and there was nothing but bloodshed and
plunder. Meanwhile Count Geoffrey conquered Normandy. At last it was
settled that Stephen should keep the crown for life, but that the son
of Geoffrey and Matilda, Henry, now Duke of the Normans, should reign
after him.
=2. Henry of Anjou.=--Duke Henry soon succeeded Stephen, and with him
a new time began. He inherited Normandy and Anjou; he took England by
the agreement with Stephen; and before he became king he had married
Eleanor, Countess of Poitou and Duchess of Aquitaine, who brought with
her all south-western Gaul. Thus the King of the English became a great
prince on the mainland, and was far more powerful in Gaul than his
lord the King of the French. Normandy and England alike became parts
of a vast dominion, the ruler of which was in no way either Norman or
English except by female descent. Yet, as he was English by female
descent, men tried to see in him a representative of the old kings.
In this state of things all the natives of England, of whatever race,
began to draw closer together, and still more so under Henry’s sons,
when a fashion set in of favouring men who were altogether strangers,
neither English nor Norman. This reign was the time of the famous
Archbishop Thomas, son of Gilbert Becket. He was born of Norman parents
in England in Henry the First’s reign, and he was the first man born
in the land who became archbishop after the Conquest. We are most
concerned with him here, because he shows how the two races were now
joined together. Thomas throughout feels and speaks as an Englishman,
and everybody looks on him as such. Henry the Second was one of our
greatest kings, the first since the Conquest who was really a lawgiver.
A great deal of our later law dates from his time, and it is all law
made for an united nation, without distinction of Normans and English.
It is not clear whether Henry himself spoke English; but he certainly
understood it, and it was commonly spoken by men of both races in his
time. Henry also increased the greatness of his kingdom by establishing
a fuller supremacy over Scotland and by beginning the conquest of
Ireland.
=3. The Sons of Henry.=--After Henry in 1189 came his son Richard.
He was born in England, but he was really the least English of all
our kings. He was only twice in England during his reign, both times
for a very little while. He first came to be crowned, and afterwards
in 1194 he came to take his crown again. For he went to the crusade,
and on his way back he was kept in prison by the Emperor Henry the
Sixth. To him he did homage for something, as Harold did to William,
and some say that it was for the crown of England that he did homage.
The rest of his reign he was chiefly fighting in Gaul; but while he
was away, England was ruled by his ministers. His first chief minister
was his chancellor William Longchamp, Bishop of Ely. He came from
Normandy, and he despised and mocked Englishmen in every way. But the
name of Englishman now took in all men born in the land, and we find
another bishop, also born in Normandy, speaking of it as a strange
and shameful thing that Bishop William could speak no English. So the
nation, under the King’s brother Earl John, rose and drove out the
foreign chancellor. In the later part of Richard’s reign the land was
better ruled by his minister Archbishop Hubert. On Richard’s death in
1199 Earl John succeeded quietly in Normandy, and was then elected
King in England. But in Anjou the notion of hereditary right had taken
deeper root, and there men were for Richard’s nephew Arthur, because
his father Geoffrey was John’s elder brother. In England a nephew had
always been passed over in such cases, and John’s election was quite
lawful. King Philip of France took Arthur’s side, but Arthur was taken
by John and, there is little doubt, was murdered by him in 1202. Then
Philip gathered a court of peers and declared that John had by this
crime forfeited all the lands that he held of the crown of France. To
carry out this decree Philip, in 1203–4, conquered all continental
Normandy; only the islands clave to their duke, and they have stayed
with the English kings ever since. So our Queen still holds the true
Normandy, the land which remained Norman, while the rest of the duchy
became French. Philip also took Anjou and the other Angevin lands; but
not Aquitaine, the duchy of Queen Eleanor, who was still living. Thus
John and his successors lost continental Normandy, but kept Aquitaine.
=4. Effects of the loss of Normandy.=--This final separation of
England and Normandy marks one of the chief stages in our story. If
any un-English feelings still lingered in the heart of any Englishman
of Norman descent, they quite died out now that England was the only
country of all Englishmen, and Normandy had become a foreign and
hostile land. While the first Angevin kings held their great dominion
in Gaul, though England was their greatest and highest possession, we
cannot say that it was in any way the head or centre, or that their
other lands were dependencies of England. But now that the King of
England held only the duchy of Aquitaine in the further part of Gaul,
that duchy was distinctly a dependency of England, and it was always
leading our kings into quarrels with France. Thus the rivalry between
England and France, which began out of the union between England and
Normandy, went on after Normandy was again joined to France. Thus both
the foreign and the domestic position of England was fixed by the loss
of Normandy. It is henceforth again a kingdom inhabited by an united
English people, but a kingdom holding a large distant dependency as a
fief of the French crown, and made thereby the special rival of France.
=5. The Nation and the Kings.=--It may seem strange that, just at
this moment, when the chief outward signs of the Norman Conquest were
swept away, and when the Normans in England had become thoroughly good
Englishmen, things should in one point seem to go back. The thirteenth
century, to which we have now come, is the time when the French tongue
came into use for official documents. In old times men had used either
English or Latin. After the Conquest English gradually died out, and
for a while we have Latin only. Now French gradually comes in, and we
have Latin and French. Thus, just when the English tongue was again
coming to the front, it was again driven back. But this increased use
of French was a mere fashion, owing very much to the great influence
which France and the French tongue had just then over all parts of
Europe. And now that the whole nation was united, it was a mere
fashion, and not a badge of conquest. But while the nation got more
English, the kings got more foreign. John (1199–1216) filled the land
with foreign mercenaries, and became the man of the Pope. The nation
wrung the Great Charter from him, and this marks a great stage. Long
after the Conquest, whenever there was any bad rule, men called for the
law of King Edward. But now we hear no more of the law of King Edward;
the Great Charter gave all that had been asked for under that name.
Under John’s son Henry the Third (1216–1272), the land was eaten up by
strangers and plundered by the Popes. Then the nation joined together
more than ever under Earl Simon of Montfort. Oddly enough, he was by
birth a Frenchman in the strictest sense; but he inherited English
estates, and he became a good Englishman, like King Cnut and Archbishop
Anselm. Under him and under the next king Edward, (1272–1307) our
national assemblies, now called _Parliaments_, began to take their
present shape, with an elective House of Commons chosen by the shires
and towns.
=6. King Edward the First.=--King Edward, the greatest of our later
kings, and the first since the Conquest who bore an English name, was
in his own day called Edward the Third or Fourth, as he really was;
but afterwards he came to be called Edward the First, as the first
of the name since the Conquest. Now at last we had a really English
king, whose object was the greatness of England at home and abroad.
He established the supremacy of England over Wales and Scotland more
thoroughly than ever. Wales was now joined to England and was gradually
incorporated with it; but the subjection of Scotland led to its
complete independence. Like Henry the Second, King Edward was a great
lawgiver; and from his day we may say that we had got back again our
old laws and freedom in shapes better suited to the times. All signs of
the Norman Conquest may now be said to have passed away, except the use
of the French tongue. King Edward spoke English well, and much English
was written in his time; and, when he was at war with France, he gave
out that the French king wished to invade England and wipe out the
English tongue. Still French went on as a fashion, and became more than
ever the language of official writings.
=7. The Wars with France.=--The last traces of French influence in
England were finally got rid of during the great war with France which
began under Edward the First’s grandson Edward the Third (1327–1377).
He claimed the crown of France through his mother, and a long war
followed, which in 1360 was ended by the peace of Bretigny. By this
Edward gave up his claim to France, but he kept the duchy of Aquitaine,
the town of Calais which he had conquered, and the county of Ponthieu,
not as fiefs of the crown of France, but as wholly independent
dominions. Then the French broke the peace; the war began again, and
England lost nearly everything except Calais, Bourdeaux, and Bayonne.
But under Henry the Fifth (1413–1422) the war again began with vigour.
He conquered Normandy, and made a peace by which he was to succeed
to the crown of France. He died just too soon for this; but his son
Henry the Sixth (1422–1460) succeeded in name to France as well as to
England, and was crowned at Paris. But in his day the English were
driven, first out of France, then out of Normandy, and then out of
Aquitaine (1453); so that England lost both the old inheritance and
the new conquest. Nothing was kept but Edward the Third’s conquest of
Calais, which was not lost till 1558. These long wars became more and
more, national wars of England against France. Edward the Third indeed,
who had been brought up by a French mother, seems to have acted less as
an English king than as a French prince claiming the French crown. But
the war was quite national on the part of his subjects, and Henry the
Fifth was an English king in every sense. These long wars with France
naturally gave a blow to the use of French at home, as being the speech
of the enemy. English quite gained the upper hand again in the course
of the fourteenth century. Henry the Fifth even had ministers who could
not speak French, and who therefore, in a conference with the French
ministers, demanded that they should use Latin, as the common language
of Western Christendom. Yet such is the power of habit that acts of
parliament were written in French till quite late in the fifteenth
century, and on some solemn occasions, as when the Queen gives her
assent to an act of parliament, the French tongue is used still.
=8. Summary.=--Thus all things, the reign of Henry the First, the
Angevin dominion and the break-up of that dominion, the un-English
reigns of John and Henry the Third and the English reign of Edward the
First, the long war with France, its victories and its defeats, all
helped, in their several ways, to undo foreign influences in England
and to make the land more and more English. We have in fact advanced
by going back. All the best changes in our laws, institutions, and
customs, have been really returns, under new forms, to our oldest ways
of all. We have thus got rid of the effects of the Norman Conquest;
but it has been by the help of the Norman Conquest itself that we have
been able to get rid of them. The Conquest did in short give the old
life and the old freedom a new start. It hindered them from dying out
or going to sleep. Men had always something to strive for and struggle
against; and so we were able to keep and to reform without ever
destroying and building up afresh. All this came of the special nature
of the Norman Conquest of England as it was explained at the beginning.
But the work was greatly helped by the fact that the Normans were after
all disguised kinsmen, and it was helped still more by the personal
character of their leader, by the strong will and far-seeing wisdom of
William the Great himself.
Oxford: Printed at the Clarendon Press by Horace Hart, M.A.
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.
Text mostly refers to “Edward” but has three occurrences of “Eadward.”