with Harold's standard. All the churches | home of his fathers, and had not where to lay abroad in which psalms had been sung and ta- his head. In this new nobility, after the royal pers burned for the success of the invasion, re- style and title of William, was classed the digniceived, in recompense, crosses, chalices, and ty of the governor of a province, as a count or stuffs of gold. After the king and the priests, earl; next to him that of lieutenant, as vicethe warriors came in for their portion, each ac- count or viscount; and then the rank of the cording to his rank and engagement. The bar- warriors, whether as barons, knights, esquires, or ons and knights got extensive domains, castles, serjeants-at-arms, all reputed to be noble, whethtown-lands, and even entire towns. Some took er by right of their victory or their foreign extheir pay in money; others were married to no- traction. ble Saxon ladies, heiresses to great possessions, whose husbands had been slain in battle. "One alone among all the warriors in the conqueror's train, claimed neither land, nor gold, nor women, and would accept no part of the spoils of the vanquished. His name was Guilbert. He said he had accompanied his lord, because it was his duty, but he would not take any of the fruits of robbery."

Citadels and fortified castles soon covered the conquered territory. The disinherited natives were also disarmed, and compelled to swear allegiance to the new government by which they had been plundered. The lot of the men was servitude and poverty; that of the women, insults and violence. Such as were not taken par mariage, were taken par amours the sport of foreign masters, whose low origin was indicated by their names. But the meanest of them was master in the house of the vanquished. "Ignoble squires, impure vagabonds," say the old annalists, "disposed, at their pleasure, of young women of the best families, leaving them to weep and to wish for death. Those despicable men, yielding to unbridled licentiousness, were themselves astonished at their villany. They became mad with pride at finding themselves so powerful. Whatever they had the will, they believed they had the right to do: they shed blood in wantonness. They snatched the last morsel of bread from the mouths of the unfortunate; they seized every thing-money, goods, and lands." The man who had crossed the sea with quilted cassock and the black wooden bow of the French soldier, now appeared to the astonished eyes of the new recruits who came after him, mounted on a war-horse and bearing the military baldrick. He who had arrived as a poor knight, soon lifted his banner (as it was then expressed), and commanded a company whose rallying cry was his own name. The herdmen of Normandy and the weavers of Flanders, with a little courage and good fortune, soon became in England men of consequence-illustrious barons; and their names, ignoble and obscure on one side of the Straits, became noble and glorious on the other. The servants of the Norman man-at-arms became gentlemen in England, whilst the once wealthy and titled Saxon was expelled from the

William, according to his chaplain and biographer, carried with him into Normandy more gold and silver than had ever before been seen in Gaul. The regular and secular clergy rivalled one another in their efforts to celebrate, by religious festivals, the return of the conqueror of the English; and, says the historian, neither monks nor priests went without their reward. He gave them gold in coins, lingots, and chalices; and what was also highly acceptable, cloths embroidered with gold and silver to spread over the altars, which especially excited the admiration of travellers. It appears that in that age, embroidery in gold with the needle was an art in which the women of England excelled. The commerce of the island, also, already very extensive, brought to it many costly articles of merchandise, unknown to the north of Gaul. Among the special objects of admiration were the drinking vessels of the Saxons, made of large buffalo-horns, and tipped with metal at the two extremities. The French wondered also at the beauty and long flowing hair of the young English who were captives or hostages in the hands of the Norman king.

Meantime the new lords of the Saxons, like all conquerors suddenly enriched, and placed in absolute authority over those whom they have most cruelly wronged, — behaved themselves towards the subjugated people with unbounded license and insolence. The most brutal oppressor was lauded by his superiors, and those who complained of injury were laughed to scorn. This led to insurrectionary movements and combinations, in which Celts and Saxons forgot their ancient animosity in love for their common country. After the surrender of Exeter, and the establishment of the Conquest in the West, these two races were involved in the same ruin, mingled together in the general mass of the enslaved population, destined to struggle on through ages of servitude and suffering, thence to rise slowly and laboriously to the predominant power and unrivalled glory which are now the portion of the English people.

Famine closely followed the footsteps of the Conquest. From the year 1067 it had been desolating those provinces which had up to that period been subdued; but in 1070 it extended

itself to the whole of England, and appeared in | and yet struggled against the fate of their country, retired to the forests and marshes, and carried on the war by robbery and assassination, viewed by the vanquished without compunction as lawful reprisals;-by the victors as infamous crimes, resulting from the natural villany of the people. Hence the popular admiration of Robin Hood, with his brave and merry men, leading a life of wild freedom in the greenwoods and glades and wolds of Old England. He sometimes paid his dreaded visits under the very walls of Norman castles, disturbing the repose of the proudest barons. This was especially the case in the north, where national life survived longer than in any other part of the country. In consequence of the oppressions and murders perpetrated, or allowed with impunity by the Bishop of Durham, the ancient spirit of Northumbria was aroused; and on a certain day a number of Saxons assembled, with concealed arms, in the court of justice, and slew the Bishop, together with a hundred men, French and Flemish. In consequence of this outrage, the Bishop of Bayeux marched on the city with a great army, massacred or mutilated the innocent inhabitants, plundered the church, and carried off what remained of the sacred ornaments. He renewed throughout the province the ravages of his brother in 1070,-and this second infliction left on the face of the country traces of desolateness so deep, that they were visible for a century afterwards. "Thus," says an old historian,

all its horrors in the places last conquered. The inhabitants of the province of York, and the country to the north of it, after feeding on the flesh of dead horses, which the Normans had abandoned on the road, devoured human flesh. "More than 100,000 people of all ages died of want in these countries." "It was a frightful spectacle," says an old annalist, "to see on the roads, in the public places, and at the doors of the houses, human bodies a prey to the worms; for there was no one left to throw a little earth over them." The famine, however, was confined to the natives. The foreign soldier lived in plenty. He had in the fortresses vast heaps of corn and other provisions, and supplies purchased for him abroad with English money. Moreover, this famine was his friend; for it assisted him in thoroughly securing his prey. Often for the remnant of the meal of one of the meanest followers of the army, the Saxon, once illustrious among his countrymen, but now wasted and depressed by hunger, would come and sell himself and all his family to perpetual slavery. "Then was the shameful treaty inscribed on the blank pages of an old missal, where these monuments of the miseries of another age, in characters nearly effaced by the worm of time, are to be traced even at this day, and supply fresh matter for the sagacity of antiquarians." Such was the holy work accomplished wherever the banner of St. Peter waved over this Catholic land! The Pope and the Cardinals of that day were willing that England should be desolated from one end to the other, and become one vast scene of lust, rapine, agony, and despair, in order that the tax of Peter's pence should be established for ever.

were cut the sinews of that province formerly so flourishing. Those once famous cities, those high towers that rose into the clouds, those smiling meadows fertilized by springs and streams, the stranger now beholds with a sigh― the old inhabitant scarce knows them again."

Over this country, where tyranny encountered the most terrible and obstinate resistance, a population half Saxon and half Danish long maintained its ancient, proud, and wild spirit of independence. When the successors of the Conqueror felt secure in the southern provinces, they did not set foot, without apprehension, on the territory beyond the Humber, whither they never ventured without an army of veteran soldiers. There the bands of outlaws were recruit

Five years after the battle of Hastings, there was no longer any freedom in England, except among a few scattered bands of soldiers without leaders, or chiefs without followers, who lived in the recesses of the country, solemnly banned and outlawed as rebels. When the Normans seized any of them, they either made slaves of them to till their estates, or slew them amidst such circumstances of barbarity, that history has shrunk from giving the inconceivably horrible details. Those who had the means of expatriating them-ed for two centuries or more, the patriotic sucselves, embarked from the ports of Wales and Scotland, and sailed to Denmark, Norway, and other countries, where the Teutonic dialects were spoken. Some directed their course to the south of Europe, and cast themselves on the pity of men of another race and a strange tongue. There were young Englishmen who went so far as Constantinople, and enlisted in the Varings, or body-guard of the Greek emperor. Those Saxons who could not or would not emigrate,

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cessors of the refugees of the camp of Ely. History," says Thierry, "names them not, or else, following the language of the legal acts of the time, it brands them with epithets calculated to withdraw from them all feeling of sympathy, naming them seditious, malcontents, robbers, and bandits. But let us not be imposed upon by these titles, odious to the ear. They are those which, in every country under foreign subjection, have been borne by brave men, who,

of the Conqueror, and effaced the maledictions | tinental adventurers filled the monasteries and

churches. Some of these were able men, but many were infamous for their debaucheries and gluttony. Nearly all the Norman bishops disdained to live in the ancient capitals of the dioceses, which were mostly small towns. Then it was that Coventry, Lincoln, Chester, and Salisbury became Episcopal cities. In general, the thirst of gain raged more fiercely among the priests than even in the soldiers of the Conquest. The tyranny of the former, mixed with open cowardice, was more disgusting than the brutality of the latter. The new abbots wielded the sword, but it was against unarmed monks. More than one convent was the scene of military executions. A moi, mes hommes d'armes —“ hither, my men-at-arms!"--was the frequent cry of one of them when his monks proved refractory.

which patriotic bishops had uttered against him. This holy league between the crown and the tiara, for the purpose of spoliation, was, as usual, disguised under a religious mask. Accordingly a great assembly of the Normans, laymen and priests, who had been inordinately enriched by confiscation, was convened at Winchester. There the Saxon bishops were summoned to appear, and were haughtily informed by the legates that they had been sent to inspect their morals and way of life, and "to plant things profitable for the body and the soul." This was the game which Rome formerly played with the British bishops, and which she played a century later with the Irish. For in every land Catholicity has walked hand in hand with conquest. The "apostolic banner" has been stained with the blood of saints and patriots. It has floated over the plundering and ruthless armies of invasion, heralding famine and pestilence, and sanctifying, for gold, every crime which the cupidity and cruelty of man can prompt him to commit against his fellow. Strange to say, civilization has made no change in this respect. Guizot maintains that France is the most civilized nation upon earth; and yet this France, under the ministry of the same Guizot, is cutting down the bread-gers to the fear of God, had so little effect, that fruit trees of Tahiti, desolating the villages which civilization has painfully reared, and uprooting the Christian morality which missionaries have planted in the hearts of savages. All this she is doing for her own glory and the good of the Catholic faith. By the way, we may ask, what worse ever occurred in the Middle Ages than her razzias in Africa? Had these enormities been perpetrated by a barbarous nation 800 years ago, with what horror should we read the recital!

Under the auspices of Rome, William effected a church reform sufficiently radical, of which Lanfranc, the new primate, was the all-powerful instrument.* He rooted out of the church almost every man of English birth, to make way for foreigners of every nation. Crowds of con

*Lanfranc was a native of Lombardy, of a noble family, and one of the most eloquent and learned men of the age. Having obtained the best education that the universities of Italy could afford, he practised as a lawyer in his native city of Pavia. But, quitting the bar for a profession which offered far higher rewards, he passed the Alps, settled in Normandy, and opened a school at Avranches. Learning was then notoriously in a very low condition in Normandy; but the talents and fame of Lanfranc soon filled its schools with men distinguished for their literary attainments. In the midst of his brilliant success as a professor, he suddenly disappeared from Avranches, without giving any intimation of the reason of his departure, or of the direction he had taken. After three years, he was discovered in the small and poor monastery of Bec, where he had become a monk, and risen to the office of prior. He then opened a school there, was quickly surrounded with scholars, while his fame as a teacher

Complaints of the degradation of the Saxon bisbops and abbots reached Rome, and were reëchoed on the continent. A deputation from England, loaded with rich presents, soon enabled Gregory to see and decide, that the Norman Church system was perfectly canonical. Not so thought Guimond, an honest monk from Normandy. Homilies in French, delivered before Saxon slaves by men who were evidently stran

even William thought it desirable to procure his subjects some more suitable instruction. Accordingly, Guimond was summoned over to England, and was offered a high ecclesiastical office, with a view to the fulfilment of this object. But he boldly answered the king thus: -“ Various motives induce me to decline ecclesiastical dignity and power. I will not declare them all. I will only say, that I cannot conceive how it is possible for me worthily to become the religious superior of men whose language and whose manners are alike unknown to me, whose fathers, brothers, and friends, have been slain by your sword, or stripped of their inheritance, banished, imprisoned, or reduced by you to slavery. Turn to the holy Scriptures, and see if they contain

enriched the monastery. His natural arrogance and deep policy were shown in an incident which occurred on the occasion of a visit made him by Bishop Herfast, with a numerous company of the Duke William's courtiers. When they appeared in his lecture-room, he had the audacity to hand the bishop a spellingbook. This insult was resented-complaint was made to William-the farm of the monastery was burned, and Lanfranc was ordered to fly from Normandy. He mounted on a poor, lame horse, rode to the court, and told the Duke he was most willing to obey his orders, but that it was plain he could not with the animal on which he was now mounted, and begged the favor of a good horse. William laughed heartily at the figure he cut, took him into favor, and made him Abbot of Caen. Such was the history of the conqueror of the Anglo-Saxon Church.-Biographia Britannica Literaria, Vol. ii., pp. 1–6.

any law which tolerates the imposition of a pas- | and exclaimed—“Edward, from thee I received tor on God's flock by the choice of an enemy. this staff; to thee, therefore, I return and con