courts. Lanfranc offered any opposition to these innovations; though he would probably have treated the first as a dead letter, if it had ever stood in his way. But he must have felt the difficulties of William's position, and that the extension and clashing of rival courts were injurious to the administration of justice; that an inquisition and secular courts could not co-exist. As a Churchman, he probably felt that his order suffered from mixing in temporal matters. It may therefore have been as a matter of discipline that the bishops about this time withdrew from the scir-gemots, and confined themselves to their own But the fact that local privileges were degraded, and feudal powers raised, no doubt assisted the change. The prelates did not care for a disputed rule in courts that were almost contemptible. William's general policy was to leave the laws which he found in the country unaltered, and to content himself with enforcing them stringently. . . . Though capable of savage excesses through passion or policy, he was not deliberately cruel. In his earliest laws he forbade the infliction of capital punishment for trifling offences, on the ground that man, made in God's image and redeemed by Christ's blood, ought not to be lightly slain. Later on, he abolished death as a capital punishment, and substituted penalties of mutilation, in order that the correction might be proportioned to the offence. But the spirit of institutions may change while the letter remains unaltered, and it made a great difference to the subject people whether they were bound in a general way to keep order among themselves, or were responsible for offences against the peace to men who had a direct interest in pressing the penalties of the law against them. Assassination was a common form of English vengeance upon the lawless foreign soldiery. At first, the murderers were accustomed to mutilate the body, that it might not be recognised, in order to save their neighbours from the "murdrum," or fine of blood, which was heavier for a Norman than for an Englishman. To prevent this evasion of justice, the practice was introduced of considering every slain man a Norman, unless proof of "Englishry" were made by the four nearest relatives of the deceased. With a similar object, as no Saxon murderer would ever have been convicted on his neighbour's oath, the ordeal was instituted, in cases of felony, for compensation. The famous curfew-bell, which was tolled at sunset in sign that lights and fires were to be put out, was a further expedient of police. The evening beer-clubs had become dangerous as the rendezvous of conspirators. But one of the worst aggravations of the Conquest lay in the difference of language between Normans and Saxons. William, indeed, had once set himself to learn English; but the difficulties of the task had been too great; and his barons could never pronounce the names of the cities they stormed: they called Lincoln Nichole, and York Eurwic. Gradually, indeed, a kind of mixed dialect sprang up, something like the lingua franca of the Levant, or the slang of Anglo-Indian society, confounding the two vocabularies and disregarding grammatical forms. But during William's reign, when there were no central courts, except the King's council, and no trained advocates, justice was administered by men unacquainted with the vernacular, and Latin became the language of official use. No doubt there was always a steward or clerk of the court, who interpreted for the people, and with whom the real management of business lay. But it was not the less an evil to the nation, that its laws, and their science, were treated in a foreign idiom, and the assistance of professional men began to be needed by those who sought justice. The greatest change that the Conquest effected, and politically the most beneficial, was the practical substitution of small administrative units, such as the "shire," for the large national divisions of provinces. It is true that the name "shire" was at least as old in England as Ine's time, and that Northumbria and Mercia are still spoken of for many years in the chronicles. But, practically, the earls of Ethelred's time had presided over several counties together, while it is rare, after the first years of the Conquest, to meet with more than one in the same hands. Our kings were jealous of over-grown principalities. Separated by the great fen district, and by the almost unbroken forests which stretched from the banks of the Mersey and Ribble through Derbyshire to Sherborne, Angle and Saxon had grown up practically as distinct as Englishman and Scotchman before the Union, with different dialects and laws, under various feudal relations, with traditions of different dynasties and of almost unbroken hostilities, and with nobilities of so distinct origin that Tostig is, perhaps, the first Southerner who was nominated for an earlship north of Mercia. But after the desolation of Yorkshire a new population grew up, recruited from all quarters; Frenchmen and Flemings settled in the towns; Cumberland was colonized with Saxons from the south by William Rufus's policy; and we know that the population of Norfolk doubled in twenty years under the Conqueror. For a time, too, the native population was united by common sympathies against its foreign nobility; and as the Normans were gradually absorbed, all had a similar grievance against the Poitevin and Angevine adventurers whom our kings, from Henry II. to Henry III., encouraged. Accordingly, while the term English denotes two separate races before the Conquest, it comes to designate a new nationality afterwards. The revolutionary decree that changed France from provinces into departments was not more important for history than these results, mostly unpremeditated, of the Conqueror's policy. Few of the Conqueror's own acts made a deeper impression on his times than the formation of the New Forest. The Hampshire preserves of the Saxon kings were increased by laying waste seventeen thousand acres; the villagers were partially evicted, and more than twenty churches destroyed; tufts of yew are still said to show where the old churchyards were. The nature of the soil, which is thin and sandy, proves that the district can never have been thickly inhabited. The excuse that William wished to prevent the landing of an enemy is less tenable, as the New Forest lay opposite to his own Norman dominions. His contemporaries regarded the act as the wanton barbarity of a man who loved the pursuit of game better than his subjects' happiness: it seemed the judgment of Heaven that two of William's sons, and a grandson,1 found untimely deaths in the forest which his violence had enlarged. The rival prejudices of Norman and English writers make it 1 Richard, William's second son, died of an illness caught in hunting. His nephew Richard, Robert's son, was crushed or otherwise killed by a branch in riding. difficult to decide which of the two peoples was the more civilized. Norman literature before the Conquest is worthless; their law-courts have nothing to match the splendid series of Anglo-Saxon charters. But these are rather proofs that their civilization was modern, than that it did not exist. For a century and a half English literature had been almost barren, while within thirty years the Italians, Lanfranc and Anselm, had founded a school in Normandy which was unrivalled in its own days, and which almost reconstructed philosophical thought in Europe. The English were renowned throughout Europe for their perfection in the mechanical arts and embroidery; but they imported their artists from Germany; and they produced nothing in architecture to rival those magnificent castles and cathedrals which the Normans have scattered broad-cast over the land. It seems certain that the Normans were more cleanly in their habits, and more courtly in their manners; their vices were rather passionate than gross, and they had the virtues of gentlemen-large-mindedness and the love of adventure. Timid devotion bound the Englishman to his Church, while a narrow insular spirit was separating him from the European centre of religion. The Norman distinguished better between the dues of Cæsar and of God. He built churches and attended mass; but he drew a line between the citizen and the priest, which the latter was never allowed to overpass. He connected the country with Europe and Roman law, but he kept it free from foreign tyranny; the Italian legate or tax-gatherer might venture here under a weak king, but the barons repeatedly drove him back or foiled him; and under an able sovereign, Henry II. or Edward I., the see of Rome was limited to its natural functions of directing the European Church and adjusting the law of nations. To sum up all, England without the Normans would have been mechanical, not artistic; brave, not chivalrous; a State governed by its priests, instead of a State controlling its Church. It had lost the tradition of Roman culture, and during half a century of peace had remained barren of poets, legists, and thinkers. We owe to Normandy the builder, the knight, the schoolman, and the statesman.1 1 Abridged from chapter xxxiv. of vol. i. H LANFRANC. A.D. 1005-1089. (From “Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury," by W. F. Hook, D.D.) LANFRANC was born about the year 1005 at Pavia, in Lombardy. Here his name is still held in honour, a church in the vicinity of the town being dedicated to San Lanfranco. Although he was not nobly born, yet his father Hanbald and his mother Roza are said to have been persons of senatorial rank -a description which indicates a high position in society. When the Lombards founded a kingdom in the north of Italy, Pavia was constituted the capital. For many years, indeed, it succeeded to the position formerly occupied by Rome, and then by Ravenna, as the metropolis of the whole peninsula. At the time, however, of Lanfranc's birth, each city in Italy appears to have regarded itself as an independent State; and there was in these towns more of real freedom than in any other part of the world. The citizens were accustomed to assemble in parliament, and the parliament was composed of all persons in the State who were capable of bearing arms. Two consuls were annually elected, and they were charged not only with the command of the army, but also with the administration of justice-the special department of Hanbald, who is spoken of as one of the conservatores legum. . . . The tastes of Lanfranc were not warlike, and he devoted himself to the study of law. For this purpose he studied in the schools of his native city, which in some respects differed from the schools in Normandy and England. The universities north of the Alps originated in the cathedral and monastic schools, but those of Italy were frequently independent of the Church Bologna and Salerno had certainly not an ecclesiastical origin. The school of Pavia is said to have been founded by Charlemagne, |