CHAPTER VII NORMAN ENGLAND 1066-1350 Authorities. The standard authority is Freeman, Norman Conquest; the same author's Short History of the Norman Conquest covers the same field in epitome. Valuable short studies of the Conquest are Johnson, The Normans in Europe, in the Epoch series; and Hunt, Norman England. The most useful histories of the English language are Lounsbury's and Emerson's. The Anglo-Saxon Era with its six centuries of isolation stands as a unique phenomenon in European history. When Italy and France and Germany were mere amorphous fragments of the Roman wreck, without individuality or fixed tongue, England had already evolved a marked personality, had supplied herself with a language, and had produced in it writings of surprising strength and variety. The Anglo-Saxon school of literature had arisen, flourished, and decayed before a single significant note had been sounded in the chorus of modern continental song. From every standpoint the era seems unique and lonely. A century and more of complete literary unproductiveness separated it from modern English literature, and when the silence was at length broken it was with a new tongue so unlike the old that the writings of Cadmon and Ælfred must now be read with lexicon and notes, like those of a foreign land. On the Eve of the Conquest. Before leaving this well rounded and most important era, let us for a moment Pre-Norman England A Rude, Warlike People look over England and note the changes which had been wrought by six centuries. The island was still a wild and barbarous land. Great forests full of wolves and wild boars and stags covered half its area, and in the east and south, where now are fertile meadows, there stretched vast sea-marshes screamed over by wild swan and heron. The fierce sea-rovers of earlier centuries had abandoned their ships and had settled down as landlords and farmers, and, as in the days of Tacitus, flocks and herds had become their chief wealth. Commerce, aside from a small trade in hides and wool and slaves exchanged for a few articles of luxury, there was none. Only the river-bottoms and the richest lands had been reclaimed for agriculture. Roads, with the exception of rude paths, were confined to the neighborhood of towns. Transportation was difficult, and communication with distant points was a work of time. The legal codes reveal to us a people but little changed at heart from the fierce invaders of earlier days. They were still given to brawling and fighting and feuds, which ended often in blood. A statute had to be enacted to make it a crime to draw weapons in the public assembly. Murder, as in the time of Beowulf, was atoned for by the payment of blood-money according to the rank of the victim. The most severe penalties were connected with treachery to a lord. Woman was still protected and honored. As in the days of Tacitus, the stranger who approached a dwelling without shouting or blowing his horn was declared an outlaw and slain. Despite six humanizing centuries, the Englishman was still coarse and brutal, addicted to drunkenness, and, aside from a small class mostly to be found in the monasteries, he was Social Classes An Illiterate People unlettered and grossly ignorant. He had added to that wild barbaric freedom which had made the perfect union of the different tribes almost impossible, an insular contempt for all the world beyond his little domain. Outside the cities, society fell roughly into three groups: the gentleman class,-eorls or thanes, a large division which embraced all landholders from the great lord of noble birth down to the small landlord whose claim to distinction was the possession of five hides of land; the middle class, or churls, who worked the farms, who must go with the land they tilled, but who were allowed to hold land of their own; and, last of all, the thralls or slaves, remnants largely of the conquered Welsh, a degraded class, of which Wamba in Ivanhoe is a true picture. Fundamentally the society of the era was a feudal one. It was a recognized law that every churl or thrall must be attached to a lord or be declared an outlaw. The population was divided into groups,-great families, of which the thane was the head and his residence the center. Around it were arranged the rude huts of thrall and churl, who not only tilled the land but carried on a variety of industries, so that the little community was self-supporting and independent. Thus towns were rendered unnecessary. The members of this group usually passed their lives on the estate where they were born, seldom during their whole lives wandering beyond its limits. With very few exceptions, churls and thralls, and even thanes, were illiterate. The noble families might seek education, and even in later days send their sons to the French schools, but the great majority could neither read nor write. It must not be forgotten that almost all the literature produced in England up to The English Language The Viking Age Chaucer's day was written to be read or recited aloud to interested listeners who were themselves unable to read. The best land in the island was in the hands of the monasteries, whose stone walls, the only substantial architecture of the time, arose on every hand. These vast estates were worked by the monks with diligence and skill, so that the monasteries not only became selfsupporting, but they yielded a surplus for trade. They were, moreover, manufacturing centers where skilled workmen congregated and wrought. Their influence has already been dwelt upon. The civilization of early England rose and fell just in proportion as these centers of intellectual energy waxed or waned. There was as yet no national language. The nature of the settlement of Britain and the provincial character of the early history of the island had encouraged dialects, traces of which exist even to this day. At the time of the Conquest three were prominent: the Northern, the Midland, and the Southern, corresponding generally with the chief provinces of the island. These dialects differed widely. A man of Devonshire could hardly understand a man of York. Which of these dialects was to win and become the language of England? For three centuries, even until the days of Chaucer, the question remained unanswered. SUGGESTED READING. Kingsley's Hereward the Wake; Lytton's Harold, the Last of the Saxon Kings. Normandy. (Du Chaillu, The Viking Age.) The wave of Scandinavian invasion which in the ninth and tenth centuries rolled with such disastrous results upon Britain, fell with equal fury upon the lands across the Channel. Settlement of Normandy The Norman Conquest No sooner was the great Charlemagne dead than the black ships of the Northmen began to appear off every coast from the Rhine to the Tiber. For two centuries Western Europe lived in a perpetual reign of terror. Band after band of Vikings, saturated with slaughter, settled in the provinces of Gaul and quickly adopting the language and customs of the natives, were lost to view. Southern Europe received a fresh infusion of blood that was soon to put a new spirit into continental 888. Final Division of history. Only one Northman band reCharlemagne's Em- tained to any degree its identity. The 888. Rollo Besieges great Viking leader, Rolf or Rollo, had sailed up the Seine as far as Paris, but, 899. Rise of the West beaten off there, had dropped down the pire. Paris. Franks. ed to Rollo. 962. Rise of Italy. 912. Normandy Grant- river and taken possession of Rouen and 912. Rise of Germany. the adjacent territory. So strong was his position that the West Frank King, Charles the Simple, made a treaty with him precisely as Ælfred had done with Guthrum in England, fixing the bounds beyond which he might not go. Thus arose the duchy of Normandy. The sea-rovers settled down as landlords and farmers; they married native wives, and with their usual versatility adopted the customs of the country. The children of the second generation, trained from infancy by French mothers, spoke the French tongue, and within a century the Normans, as they were now called, had become in reality a French people. The Norman Conquest. Under the successors of Rollo, Normandy became the leading province of France. It extended its territory and under William, the seventh duke, who proved to be one of the commanding figures in the world's history, successfully opposed even the |