ansplant the English nation or any part of it; but it gradually
deprived the leading men and families of England of their land and
offices, and thrust them down into a secondary position under the alien
intruders.

It must not be forgotten that the old English constitution survived the
Norman Conquest. What the constitution had been under the Saxon Eadgar,
that it remained under William. The laws, with a few changes in detail,
and also the language of the public documents, remained the same. The
powers vested in King William and his Witan remained constitutionally
the same as those which had been vested in King Eadgar and his Witan a
hundred years before. Immense changes ensued in social condition and
administration, and in the relation of the kingdom to foreign lands.
There was also a vast increase of royal power, and new relations were
introduced between the king and every class of his subjects; but formal
constitutional changes there were none.

I cannot too often repeat, for the saying is the very summing up of the
whole history, that the Norman Conquest was not the wiping out of the
constitution, the laws, the language, the national life of Englishmen.
The English kingship gradually changed from the old Teutonic to the
later mediaeval type; but the change began before the Norman Conquest. It
was hastened by that event; it was not completed till long after it, and
the gradual transition, was brought to perfection by Henry II.

Certain events indicate the remoter causes of the Norman Conquest. The
accession of Eadward at once brings us among the events that led
immediately to that conquest, or rather we may look on the accession of
this Saxon king as the first stage of the conquest itself. Swend and
Cnut, the Danes, had shown that it was possible for a foreign power to
overcome England by force of arms.

The misgovernment of the sons of Cnut hindered the formation of a
lasting Danish dynasty in England. The throne of Cerdic was again filled
by a son of Woden; but there can be no doubt that the shock given to the
country by the Danish Conquest, especially the way in which the ancient
nobility was cut off in the long struggle with Swend and Cnut, directly
opened the way for the coming of the Norman. Eadward did his best,
wittingly or unwillingly, to make his path still easier. This he did by
accustoming Englishmen to the sight of strangers--not national kinsmen
like Cnut's Danes, but Frenchmen, men of utterly alien