of the
religious supremacy of the English sovereigns. Oxford has grown; it is
no longer indispensable to go to Paris in order to learn. Limits are
established: the wars with France are royal and not national ones.
Edward III., having assumed the title of king of France, his subjects
compel him to declare that their allegiance is only owed to him as king
of England, and not as king of France.[407] No longer is the nation
Anglo-French, Norman, Angevin, or Gascon; it is English; the nebula
condenses into a star.

The first consequences of the Conquest had been to bind England to the
civilisations of the south. The experiment had proved a successful one,
the results obtained were definitive; there was no need to go further,
the ties could now without harm slacken or break. Owing to that
evolutionary movement perpetually evinced in human affairs, this first
experiment having been perfected after a lapse of three hundred years, a
counter-experiment now begins. A new centre, unknown till then,
gradually draws to itself every one's attention; it will soon attract
the eyes of the English in preference to Rome, Paris, or even the king's
Court. This new centre is Westminster. There, an institution derived
from French and Saxonic sources, but destined to be abortive in France,
is developed to an extent unparalleled in any other country. Parliament,
which was, at the end of the thirteenth century, in an embryonic state,
is found at the end of the fourteenth completely constituted, endowed
with all its actual elements, with power, prerogatives, and an influence
in the State that it has rarely surpassed at any time.

Not in vain have the Normans, Angevins, and Gascons given to the men of
the land the example of their clever and shrewd practice. Not in vain
have they blended the two races into one: their peculiar characteristics
have been infused into their new compatriots: so much so that from the
first day Parliament begins to feel conscious of its strength, it
displays bias most astonishing to behold: it thinks and acts and behaves
as an assembly of Normans. The once violent and vacillating
Anglo-Saxons, easily roused to enthusiasm and brought down to despair,
now calculate, consider, deliberate, do nothing in haste, act with
diplomatic subtlety, _bargain_. All compromises between the Court and
Parliament, in the fourteenth century, are a series of bargains;
Parliament pays on condition that the king reforms; nothing for nothing;