[B] An Account of the Danes and Norwegians in England, Scotland, and
Ireland, by J. J. Worsaae, Sec. I. p. 6.
[C] "What we call purchase, _perquisitio_," says Blackstone, "the
feudists called conquest, _conquisitio_; both denoting any means of
acquiring an estate out of the common course of inheritance. And this is
still the proper phrase in the law of Scotland, as it was among the
Norman jurists, who styled the first purchaser (that is, him who bought
the estate into the family which at present owns it) the conqueror, or
_conquereur_, which seems to be all that was meant by the appellation
which was given to William the Norman." Had Harold been victorious at
Hastings, he would, according to the feudists, have been the Conqueror;
that is, the man who brought England into his family.
[D] The History of Normandy and of England, Vol. I. pp. 703, 704. One of
the greatest historical works of a country and an age singularly rich in
historical literature, but incomplete, like the works of Macaulay,
Niebuhr, and Arnold, and the last work of Prescott. The third and fourth
volumes, posthumously published in 1864,--Sir Francis died in 1861,--are
well edited by the author's son, Mr. Francis Turner Palgrave, who
honorably upholds the honored name he inherits.
[E] Merivale, History of the Romans under the Empire; Vol. IV. p. 297,
note: "The civilization of barbarians, at least their material
cultivation, has been generally more advanced by instructors whose moral
superiority was less strongly marked, than where the teachers and the
taught have few common sympathies and points of contact. Thus, in our
own times, rough whalers and brutal pirates have done more to
Europeanize the natives of Polynesia than the missionaries."
[F] A History of England under the Norman Kings, etc., pp. 84, 85, and
87. Dr. Lappenberg is emphatic on the subject of the formation of the
Norman race through the junction of various races. "Rolf [Rollo] and his
companions were like those meteors which traverse the air with
incredible swiftness," he says, "and in vanishing leave behind them long
streams of fire which the eye gazes on with amazement. The Northmen who
settled in Neustria gradually became lost among the French, a mixture of
Gauls and Romans, Franks and Burgundians, West Goths and Saracens,
friends and foes, barbarians and civilized nations. Ten sorts of
language, and with them, perhaps, as many forms of government, were lost
amid this mass of peoples. French and foreigners have visited Normandy
in search of some traces of the old Scandinavian colonies, or at least
of some testimonial of their long sojourn there, and one or other
memorial characteristic of this daring people. All have admired the
prosperity of the province, to which the fertility of the soil and its
manufactures and commerce have contributed; but vainly have they sought
for the original Northmen in the present inhabitants. With the exception
of some faint resemblances, they have met with nothing Norsk."--pp. 65,
66.
[G] The History of Normandy and of England, Vol. I. pp. 704, 705.
Lanfranc, who was made Archbishop of Canterbury by the Conqueror, was a
native of Pavia, and Anselm, his successor, a native of Aosta.
[H] Rollo and his Race: or, Footsteps of the Normans, Vol. II. pp.
107-109.
[I] What Sir F. Palgrave says of the famous son of Robert Guiscard is
applicable generally to the Normans: "Bohemond was affectionate and true
to father, wife, and children, pleasant, affable, and courteous: yet
wrapped up in selfishness, possessed by insatiate ambition and almost
diabolical cruelty, proud and faithless, but in spite of all these vices
so seductive as to command the admiration even of those who knew him to
be a heartless demon."--_History_ Vol. IV. p. 471.
[J] "The heart of Emma clung more and more to her native land. Her
feelings were inherited by the children who were afterward born to
her,--they imbibed them at their mother's breast. Their hearts were
thoroughly alienated from England, and the Normans and Normandy became
as their kindred and their home."--Palgrave, Vol. III. p. 112. Edward's
wife was Editha, daughter of Earl Godwin, and sister of Harold.
[K] The History of Normandy and of England, Vol. III. pp. 293, 294.
[L] History of the Four Conquests of England, Vol. II. pp. 176-178.
[M] The legitimate descent of Queen Victoria from the Conqueror is
sometimes disputed, because it is not correctly traced, in consequence
of the line of descent being carried back through Henry VII., instead of
being carried through his wife, _nee_ Elizabeth Plantagenet. It may not
be uninteresting to state the royal pedigree, which is at times rather
intricate, and full of sinuosities,--in part due to the occurrences of
political revolutions, old English statesmen never having paid much
regard to political legitimacy, which is a modern notion. Queen Victoria
is the daughter of Edward, Duke of Kent, who was son of George III., who
was son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, who was son of George II., who
was son of George I., who was son of the Electress Sophia (by Ernest
Augustus, Elector of Hanover), who was daughter of Elizabeth Stuart (by
Frederick V., Elector Palatine and "Winter King" of Bohemia), who was
daughter of James I. (Sixth of Scotland), who was son of Mary, Queen of
Scots (by Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley), who was daughter of James V., who
was son of Margaret Tudor (by James IV.), who was daughter of Elizabeth
Plantagenet (by Henry VII.), who was daughter of Edward IV., who was son
of Richard, Duke of York, who was son of Anne Mortimer (by Richard
Plantagenet, Earl of Cambridge, son of Edmund, Duke of York, fifth son
of Edward III.), who was daughter of Roger, Earl of Marche, who was son
of Philippe (by Edmund, Earl of Marche), who was daughter of Lionel,
Duke of Clarence, third son of Edward III., who was son of Edward II.,
who was son of Edward I., who was son of Henry III., who was son of
John, who was son of Henry II., who was son of Matilda (by Geoffrey
Plantagenet, Count of Anjou), who was daughter of Henry I. (by Matilda
of Scotland, sister of Edgar Atheling, and therefore of the Saxon blood
royal), who was son of William the Conqueror. Thus Queen Victoria is
descended legitimately from the Conqueror, not only through Lionel, Duke
of Clarence, Edward III.'s third son, but also through that monarch's
fifth son, Edmund, Duke of York, whose second son, the Earl of
Cambridge, married the great-granddaughter of the Duke of Clarence. Had
the great struggle of the English throne in the fifteenth century been
correctly named, it would stand in history as the contest between the
lines of Clarence (not York) and Lancaster. In virtue of her descent
from Henry VII., Queen Victoria shares "the aspiring blood of
Lancaster," which was so mounting that it brought the worst of woes on
England. Henry VII. was the son of Margaret Beaufort (by Edmund Tudor,
Earl of Richmond), who was the daughter of John, Duke of Somerset, who
was the son of John, Earl of Somerset, who was the son of John of Gaunt,
Duke of Lancaster, fourth son of Edward III.; but the mother of the Earl
of Somerset was, at the time of his birth, not the wife, but the
mistress of the Duke of Lancaster, though he married her late in life,
and in various ways obtained the legitimation of the children she had
borne him,--facts that could not remove the great fact of their
illegitimacy, if marriage is to count for anything and which no good
historian has treated with respect. Lord Macaulay calls the Tudors "a
line of bastards," and ranks them with the "succession of impostors" set
up by the adherents of the White Rose. Froude's great work has created a
new interest in the question of the English succession, for he bases his
peculiar view of the character of Henry VIII., and his justification of
all his acts of heartless tyranny, on the necessities that grew out of
that perplexing question, which troubled England for two centuries, thus
forming a practical satire on that theory which represents that the
peculiar excellence of hereditary monarchy is found in its power to
prevent disputes for the possession of government, and to promote the
preservation of society's peace,--a theory which has often been thrown
into the teeth of republicans, and particularly since the occurrence of
our unhappy civil troubles. Yet one would think that Gettysburg and
Shiloh were not worse days than Towton and Barnet. Those persons who are
interested in the English succession question, and who would see how
wide a one it was, and how far and how long and variously it affected
the politics of Continental Europe as well as those of England, should
read the chapter on the subject in Miss Cooper's "Life and Letters of
Arabella Stuart," a learned and lively work, and not the least
meritorious of those admirable historical productions which we owe to
the genius, the industry, and the honesty of Englishwomen,--Agnes
Strickland, Caroline A. Halsted, Lucy Aiken, Mrs. Everett Green,
Elizabeth Cooper, and others,--whose writings do honor to the sex, and
fairly entitle their authors to be ranked with those accomplished ladies
of the sixteenth century whose solid attainments have so long been
matter of despairing admiration.
[N] _Histoire de la Conquete de l'Angleterre par les Normans_, Tom. I.
pp. 237, 238.