THE MAKING OF ENGLAND--THE ANGLO-SAXONS AND THE NORMANS
How the Romanised Briton of England would have fared ultimately in his
contest with the more savage Britons of the north and the west, who came to
rob him down to his toga, if they had been left to fight it out, it is hard
to say. Probably the course of events would have been that the English
natives would first have yielded to the northern invaders, and afterwards
absorbed them and made them partakers in their civilisation.
[Illustration: RICHMOND, YORKSHIRE
A town of considerable importance at the time of the Norman Conquest]
But the issue was never fought out. There had begun the most momentous
swarming of a human race that history records. Along the Scandinavian and
the Danish peninsulas, and the northern coast of Germany, there had been
swelling up a vast population of fierce, strong, courageous and hungry men;
Angles, Saxons, Danes, Jutes, Norsemen--they were all very much akin: big
blue-eyed men of mighty daring mated with fair, chaste, fruitful women; and
they swarmed out of their warrens to over-run the greater part of Europe.
You may trace them to the interior of Russia, to Iceland, to
Constantinople, some think to North America. But, whatever their path, the
British Islands were athwart the track they took, and the British Islands
received the most complete flood of Anglo-Saxon blood. Again it was England
that made way most easily to the invader. The Anglo-Saxons came and cleared
out the Romanised and Christian civilisation from Yorkshire to Kent. But
the fiercer British natives who had held back the Romans, held back also
these new invaders, helped thereto by the fact that their lands seemed to
be hungry, and to offer but little booty. England, fat, fertile, like a
beautiful park with its forests and meadows and rivers, was at once a
richer and an easier prize.
The Anglo-Saxon probably made his conquest more easy by treachery and by
fomenting discord among the Britons. There is a ballad by Thomas Love
Peacock, which treats of such an Anglo-Saxon victory--with at least a
shadow of a shade of historical warrant:--
"Come to the feast of wine and meat,"
Spake the dark dweller of the sea.
"There shall the hours in mirth proceed;
There neither sword nor shield shall be."
None but the noblest of the land,
The flower of Britain's chiefs were there;
Unarmed, amid the Saxon band
They sate, the fatal feast to share.
Three hundred chiefs, three score and three
Went, where the festal torches burned
Before the dweller of the sea;
They went, and three alone returned.
Till dawn the pale sweet mead they quaffed,
The ocean chief unclosed his vest,
His hand was on his dagger's haft,
And daggers glared at every breast.
Still it was an easy victory, that of Anglo-Saxon over Briton. But just as
we must, in the light of recent knowledge, give up the idea that the Briton
whom Julius Caesar encountered was a woad-painted savage, so we must refuse
to accept the impression (which is implied more often than directly stated)
that the Romanised Briton, after the departure of the Roman legions, was
quite helpless. Between the Roman departure from Britain and the
establishment of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms there, room must be found,
somehow, for whatever of historical truth there is as a foundation for the
Arthurian legends. On that point let old Caxton speak:--
Now it is notoriously known through the universal world
that there be nine worthy and the best that ever were.
That is to wit three paynims, three Jews, and three
Christian men. As for the paynims they were tofore the
Incarnation of Christ, which were named, the first
Hector of Troy, of whom the history is come both in
ballad and in prose; the second Alexander the Great;
and the third Julius Caesar, Emperor of Rome, of whom
the histories be well-known and had.
And as for the three Jews which also were tofore the
Incarnation of our Lord, of whom the first was Duke
Joshua which brought the children of Israel into the
land of behest; the second David, King of Jerusalem;
and the third Judas Maccabaeus; of these three the Bible
rehearseth all their noble histories and acts.
And sith the said Incarnation have been three noble
Christian men stalled and admitted through the
universal world into the number of the nine best and
worthy, of whom was first the noble Arthur, whose noble
acts I purpose to write in this present book here
following. The second was Charlemagne or Charles the
Great, of whom the history is had in many places both
in French and English; and the third and last was
Godfrey of Bouillon, of whose acts and life I made a
book unto the excellent prince and king of noble
memory, King Edward the Fourth. The said noble
gentleman instantly required me to imprint the history
of the said noble king and conqueror, King Arthur, and
of his knights, with the history of the Sangreal, and
of the death and ending of the said Arthur; affirming
that I ought rather to imprint his acts and noble
feats, than of Godfrey of Bouillon, or any of the other
eight, considering that he was a man born within this
realm, and king and emperor of the same; and that there
be in French divers and many noble volumes of his acts,
and also of his knights.
To whom I answered, that divers men hold opinion that
there was no such Arthur, and that all such books as be
made of him be but feigned and fables, by cause that
some chronicles make of him no mention nor remember him
no thing, nor of his knights. Whereunto they answered,
and one in special said, that in him that should say or
think that there was never such a king called Arthur,
might well be credited great folly and blindness; for
he said that there were many evidences of the contrary:
first ye may see his sepulture in the Monastery of
Glastonbury. And also in _Polichronicon_, in the fifth
book of the sixth chapter, and in the seventh book and
the twenty-third chapter, where his body was buried and
after found and translated into the said monastery. Ye
shall see also in the history of Bochas, in his book
_De Casu Principum_, part of his noble acts, and also
of his fall.
Also Galfridus in his British book recounteth his life;
and in divers places of England many remembrances be
yet of him and shall remain perpetually, and also of
his knights. First in the Abbey of Westminster, at
Saint Edward's shrine, remaineth the print of his seal
in red wax closed in beryl, in which is written
_Patricius Arthurus, Britannae, Gallie, Germanie, Dacie,
Imperator_. Item in the castle of Dover ye may see
Gawaine's skull and Craddock's mantle, at Winchester
the Round Table, in other places Launcelot's sword and
many other things. Then all these things considered,
there can no man reasonably gainsay but there was a
king of this land named Arthur. For in all places,
Christian and heathen, he is reputed and taken for one
of the nine worthy, and the first of the three
Christian men. And also he is more spoken of beyond the
sea, more books made of his noble acts than there be in
England, as well in Dutch, Italian, Spanish, and Greek,
as in French. And yet of record remain in witness of
him in Wales, in the town of Camelot, the great stones
and marvellous works of iron, lying under the ground,
and royal vaults, which divers now living hath seen.
I fear one cannot take Caxton's endorsement of Sir Thomas Malory as final
evidence, and accept as historic a King Arthur who on one occasion invaded
the European Continent and defeated in battle the troops of the Roman
Emperor. But there were men to fight in England after the Romans left; and
those beaten in the fight fell back on Scotland, on Wales, on Cornwall, and
some of them wandered farther afield and colonised Brittany in France, a
province which to-day reminds of Cornwall at a thousand points.
The Anglo-Saxons, like other nations, found the air of England civilising.
They aspired to settle down in quiet comfort when there came from the east
a fresh cloud of freebooters, the Danes, to claim a share in this
delectable island. Dane and Saxon fought it out--the Briton from "the
Celtic fringe" occasionally interfering--with all the hearty ill-will of
blood relations, and as they fought shaped out a very good people, partly
English, partly Saxon, partly Danish, and in the mountains partly British.
If you look over England with a seeing eye, you can notice the traces of
each element in the nation's blood; and the landscape will partly explain
why in one place there is a Celtic predominance, in another a Danish. Each
national type sought and held the districts most suitable to its character.
After the Danish, the last great element in the making of the British race
was the Norman. The Normans were not so much aliens as might be supposed.
The Anglo-Saxons of the day were descendants of sea-pirates who had settled
in Britain and mingled their blood with the British. The Normans were
descendants of kindred sea-pirates who had settled in Gaul, and mingled
their blood with that of the Gauls and Franks. The two races, Anglo-Saxon
and Normans, after a while merged amicably enough, the Anglo-Saxon blood
predominating, and the present British type was evolved, in part Celtic, in
part Danish, in part Anglo-Saxon, in part Norman--a hard-fighting,
stubborn, adventurous type, which in its making from such varied elements
had learned the value of compromise, and of the common-sense principle of
give-and-take.
The Normans brought to England a higher knowledge of the arts than the
Anglo-Saxons had. The Roman culture of Britain had been just as high as the
Roman culture of Gaul. But in Britain its tradition had been lost to a
great extent in the onrush of the rude, unlettered Anglo-Saxons. In Gaul
the Norsemen had won only a district, not the whole country, and they had
been surrounded by civilising influences and had reacted to them
wonderfully. Practically all the fine buildings of England date from after
the Norman Epoch. But it is a fact which will strike at once the student of
those buildings, who afterwards compares them with contemporary Norman
buildings in France, that Norman architecture was not transplanted to
England. Whilst at Rouen, Lisieux, Caen, Bayeux, you see the churches
usually in Flamboyant or Ogival Gothic; in England the churches of about
the same date are in a more severe and straight-laced style. It is well
worth the trouble to study somewhat closely the churches built by the
Normans in France and by the Norman-English in England during the century
after the Conquest. A clear indication will be found from the study that
the Normans did not over-run and beat down the Anglo-Saxons; but that the
Anglo-Saxon was the "predominant partner" almost from the first in the
domestic economy of the nation, however badly he fared in the tented field
against the Normans.
The antiquities of England, the edifices of England, the very fields of
England will be understood better if they are looked at in the light of
English history--not that bare-bones caricature of history which is a mere
record of battles and kings, but the living history which traces to their
sources the streams of our race. The England of to-day is beginning to know
the wisdom of a close sympathetic study of the past. One of the signs of
this awakening of the historical sense is the popularity of the open-air
pageant reviving scenes of old. I shall always remember, among many of
those pageants, a particularly fine one at Chester, a city of great
historic importance.
[Illustration: NORMAN STAIRCASE, KING'S SCHOOL, CANTERBURY]
Such brilliant sunshine as rarely glows over "green and cloudy England"
greeted this Chester Pageant; and, with it, just enough of a gentle breeze
as to set all the leaves to a morris dance and to give to banner and mantle
a flowing line. The scene for the play was set by Nature, or by good
gardeners of long ago working in close sympathy with her model for an
English pleasaunce. It was a very dainty sward, perhaps of five acres in
all, ringed around with trees and bushes in their native wildness, which
invaded here and there the grass with an out-thrown clump or extended arm.
On such a spot fairies would pitch for their revels, noticing how the
curtains of the shrubberies would mask their troopings, and the extending
wings of boscage give surprise to their exits and entrances. With perfect
weather and a perfect stage, the Chester Pageant needed to claim a large
excellence to prove itself worthy of its opportunity; and did make and
fully establish the claim.
It was bright, graced with fine music and much dainty dancing, engrossing
in its story, and amusing in the little character sketches of life with
which it embroidered history. Also it taught patriotism by impressing proud
facts of history. Where, to serve the purpose of the picturesque, the
probable rather than the certain was followed, due warning was given; and
the wise plan was adopted of interspersing with the great incidents pages
from the familiar life of the people. The Crusade was preached from Chester
Cross; side by side with it was shown an excerpt from cottage life in the
story of Dickon, an archer, and his betrothed, Alison, whom he would leave,
and yet not leave, to take the badge of the Crusade. History was, in fact,
made homely, as history should be if it is to claim interest outside the
philosopher's study.
Chester is very proud of its history and jealously preserves its
antiquities. A city which was a great camp for the Romans, a naval
headquarters for the Saxons, a centre for the fierce contests between
Normans and Welsh, a much-disputed prize in the Civil War, has certainly
much history to cherish, and Chester nobly indulges the pride. No other
city of England, not even excepting London, shows so much reverence for a
glorious past.
But all through England there is an awakening of historical interest; and
it marches on the right lines to make history not so much a record of dead
people as an explanation of living people.
After this short glance at the past let us look to the England of to-day.