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History of English Literature

Notes 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 Adriatic. ‘From
the fury of the Norsemen, good Lord, deliver us!’ was a regular part of the litany of the unhappy
French. They settled Iceland and Greenland and prematurely discovered America; they established
themselves as the ruling aristocracy in Russia, and as the imperial bodyguard and chief bulwark of
the Byzantine Empire at Constantinople; and in the eleventh century they conquered southern
Italy and Sicily, whence in the first crusade they pressed on with unabated vigor to Asia Minor.
Those bands of them with whom we are here concerned, and who became known distinctively as
Normans, fastened themselves as settlers, early in the eleventh century, on the northern shore of
France, and in return for their acceptance of Christianity and acknowledgment of the nominal
feudal sovereignty of the French king were recognized as rightful possessors of the large province
which thus came to bear the name of Normandy. Here by intermarriage with the native women
they rapidly developed into a race which while retaining all their original courage and enterprise
took on also, together with the French language, the French intellectual brilliancy and flexibility
and in manners became the chief exponent of medieval chivalry.
The different elements contributed to the modern English character by the latest stocks which have
been united in it have been indicated by Matthew Arnold in a famous passage ‘On the Study of
Celtic Literature’: ‘The Germanic [Anglo-Saxon and ‘Danish’] genius has steadiness as its main
basis, with commonness and humdrum for its defect, fidelity to nature for its excellence. The
Norman genius, talent for affairs as its main basis, with strenuousness and clear rapidity for its
excellence, hardness and insolence for its defect.’ The Germanic element explains, then, why
uneducated Englishmen of all times have been thick-headed, unpleasantly self-assertive, and
unimaginative, but sturdy fighters; and the Norman strain why upper-class Englishmen have
been self-contained, inclined to snobbishness, but vigorously aggressive and persevering, among
the best conquerors, organizers, and administrators in the history of the world.

1.4.1 Social Results of the Conquest

In most respects, or all, the Norman Conquest accomplished precisely that racial rejuvenation of
which, as we have seen, Anglo-Saxon England stood in need. For the Normans brought with them
from France the zest for joy and beauty and dignified and stately ceremony in which the Anglo-
Saxon temperament was poor they brought the love of light-hearted song and chivalrous sports,
of rich clothing, of finely-painted manuscripts, of noble architecture in cathedrals and palaces, of
formal religious ritual, and of the pomp and display of all elaborate pageantry. In the outcome
they largely reshaped the heavy mass of Anglo-Saxon life into forms of grace and beauty and
brightened its duller surface with varied and brilliant colors. For the Anglo-Saxons themselves,
however, the Conquest meant at first little else than that bitterest and most complete of all
national disasters, hopeless subjection to a tyrannical and contemptuous foe. The Normans were
not heathen, as the ‘Danes’ had been, and they were too few in number to wish to supplant the
conquered people; but they imposed themselves, both politically and socially, as stern and absolute
masters. King William confirmed in their possessions the few Saxon nobles and lesser land-
owners who accepted his rule and did not later revolt; but both pledges and interest compelled
him to bestow most of the estates of the kingdom, together with the widows of their former
holders, on his own nobles and the great motley throng of turbulent fighters who had made up his
invading army. In the lordships and manors, therefore, and likewise in the great places of the
Church, were established knights and nobles, the secular ones holding in feudal tenure from the
king or his immediate great vassals, and each supported in turn by Norman men-at-arms; and to
them were subjected as serfs, workers bound to the land, the greater part of the Saxon population.
As visible signs of the changed order appeared here and there throughout the country massive and
gloomy castles of stone, and in the larger cities, in place of the simple Anglo-Saxon churches,
cathedrals lofty and magnificent beyond all Anglo-Saxon dreams. What sufferings, at the worst,
the Normans inflicted on the Saxons is indicated in a famous passage of the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,’
an entry seventy years subsequent to the Conquest, of which the least distressing part may be thus
paraphrased.
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