f fighting blood, and a common
love of the sea.

The Norman Conquest of England was but one instance of Norman
activity: Sicily, Italy, Constantinople, even Antioch, and the Holy
Land itself, showed in time Norman states, Norman laws, Norman
civilisation, and all alike felt the impulse of Norman energy and
inspiration. England lay ready to hand for Norman invasion--the hope
of peaceable succession to the saintly Edward the Confessor had to be
abandoned by William; the gradual permeation of sluggish England with
Norman earls, churchmen, courtiers, had been comprehended and checked
by Earl Godwin and his sons (themselves of Danish race); but there
still remained the way of open war and an appeal to religious zeal;
and this way William took. There was genius as well as statesmanship
in the idea of combining a personal claim to the throne held by Harold
the usurper with a crusading summons against the schismatic and
heretical English, who refused obedience to the true successor of St.
Peter. The success of the idea was its justification: the success of
the expedition proved the need that England had of some new leaven to
energise the sluggish temperament of her sons. The Norman Conquest not
only revived and quickened, but unified and solidified the English
nation. The tyranny of the Norman nobles, held in check at first only
by the tyranny of the Norman king, was the factor in mediaeval English
life that made for a national consciousness; it also helped the
appreciation of the heroism of revolt against tyranny which is seen in
Hereward the Wake, in Robin Hood, in William of Cloudeslee, and in
many other English hero-rebels; but it gradually led men to a
realization of their own rights as Englishmen. When all men alike felt
themselves sons of England, the days were past when Norman and Saxon
were aliens to each other, and Norman robber soon became as truly
English as Danish viking, Anglo-Saxon seafarer, or Celtic settler.
Then the full value of the Norman infusion was seen in quicker
intellectual apprehension, nimbler wit, a keener sense of reverence, a
more spiritual piety, a more refined courtesy, and a more enlightened
perception of the value of law. The materialism of the original Saxon
race was successively modified by many influences, and not least of
these was the Norman Conquest.

From the Norman Conquest onward England has welcomed men of many
nations--French, Flemings, Germans, Dutch: men brought by war, by
trad