PART II HISTORICAL STUDIES IT NORMANS UNDER EDWARD THE T is probable that in spite of all the efforts of that school which found in Mr. Freeman its ablest and most ardent leader, the "fatal habit," as he termed it at the outset of his magnum opus "of beginning the study of English history with the Norman Conquest itself," will continue, in practice, to prevail among those who have a choice in the matter. It was characteristic of the late Professor to assign the tendency he deplored to "a confused and unhappy nomenclature," for to him names, as I have elsewhere shown,' were always of more importance than they are to the world at large. More to the point is the explanation given by Mr. Grant Allen, who attributes to the unfamiliar look of Anglo-Saxon appellatives the lack of interest shown in those who bore them. And yet there must be, surely, a deeper cause than this, an instinctive feeling that in England our consecutive political history does, in a sense, begin with the Norman Conquest. On the one hand it gave us, suddenly, a strong, purposeful monarchy; on the other it brought us men ready to record history, and to give ustreason though it be to say so-something better than the 1 Quarterly Review, June, 1892, pp. 9, 10. We thus ex arid entries in our jejune native chronicle. change aimless struggles, told in an uninviting fashion, for a great issue and a definite policy, on which we have at our disposal materials deserving of study. From the moment of the Conqueror's landing we trace a continuous history, and one that we can really work at in the light of chronicles and records. I begin these studies, therefore, with the Conquest, or rather with the coming of the Normans. For, as Mr. Freeman rightly insisted, it is with the reign of Edward the Confessor that "the Norman Conquest really begins": it was "his accession" that marked, in its results," the first stage of the Conquest itself."" 2 As he, elsewhere, justly observed of Edward: Normandy was ever the land of his affection. His heart was French. His delight was to surround himself with companions who came from the beloved land, and who spoke the beloved tongue, to enrich them with English estates, to invest them with the highest offices of the English kingdom . . . His real affections were lavished on the Norman priests and gentlemen who flocked to his court as to the land of promise. These strangers were placed in important offices about the royal person, and before long they were set to rule as Earls and Bishops over the already half conquered soil of England. . . . These were again only the first instalment of the larger gang who were to win for themselves a more lasting settlement four and twenty years later. In all this the seeds of the Conquest were sowing, or rather, it is now that the Conquest actually begins. The reign of Edward is a period of struggle between natives and foreigners for dominion in England." One has, it is true, always to remember that if Edward, on his mother's side, was a Norman, so was Harold, as his name reminds us, on his mother's side, a Dane. Nor is it without significance that, on the exile of his house (1051), he fled to the Scandinavian settlers on the Irish coast, and found, no doubt, among them those who shared his almost piratical return in 1052. The late Professor's bias against 2 N. C., i. 525, 526. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., ii. 29, 30. "Mr. Freeman admits that his crews "probably consisted mainly of Ports in Norman Hands 319 all that was "French," together with his love for the “kindred" lands of Germany and Scandinavia, led him, perhaps, to obscure the fact that England was a prey which the Dane was as eager to grasp as the Norman. But this in no way impugns the truth of his view that "the Norman tendencies of Edward" paved the way for the coming of William. Nor can we hesitate to begin the study of the Norman Conquest with the coming of those, its true forerunners,— "Ke Ewart i aveit menéz Et granz chastels è fieux dunez,” and with whom may be said to have begun the story of Feudal England. Professor Burrows is entitled to the credit of setting forth the theory, in his little book upon the Cinque Ports, that Edward the Confessor "had evidently intended to make the little group of Sussex towns, the 'New Burgh' [? afterwards Hastings], Winchelsea, and Rye a strong link of communication between England and Normandy," by placing them under the control of Fécamp Abbey. He holds, indeed, that Godwine and Harold had contrived to thwart this intention in the case of the latter; but this, as I shall show in my paper on the Cinque Ports, arises from a misapprehension. This theory I propose to develop by adding the case of Steyning, Edward's grant of which to Fécamp is well known, and has been discussed by Mr. Freeman. It might not, possibly, occur to any one that Steyning, like Arundel, was at that time a port. But in a very curious record of 1103, narrating the agreement made between the Abbot and De Braose, the Lord of Bramber, it is mentioned that ships, in the days of the Confessor, used to come up to the "portus S. Cuthmanni" [the patron adventurers from the Danish Saxons of Ireland, ready for any enterprise which promised excitement and plunder" (N. C., ii. 313). 6 Historic Towns: Cinque Ports, pp. 26-9. |