^be flDi^Mc Bocs,— ^be IRonnan Conqnc0t 



A.D. 1066. 



CHAPTER X. 



DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN CONQUEROR AND CONQUERED. 



Again the terminology changes. The village community has 

 become a barony, its lord a tenant-in-chief, and his vassals and 

 villains are soon to be known as freeholders and copyholders. 

 Feudalism grasps all England in its iron fingers, and the 

 pitiless accuracy of Domesday Book leaves no loophole of 

 escape. The conqueror flings his sword, like Brennus, into the 

 scales of justice, and claims seignorial rights over every acre 

 of English ground as his share of the spoil. Those of the con- 

 quered in whom yet lingers a spark of the old Bersaker or 

 Viking fire fly as outlaws to the woods, and each peaceful 

 householder on their outskirts nightly barricades his doors 

 and windows, and goes to bed in direful doubt whether he 

 shall ever see again the morning's sun. 



The race enmity exceeds imagination, and has seldom been 

 surpassed. The most insulting and degrading of modern aris- 

 tocratic phrases ^ — " You're a cad, sir " may be paraphrased in 

 Norman lips by " Fellow, you're an Englishman ! " And this 

 is the more remarkable when we trace back the ethnology of 

 both conqueror and conquered to identical sources. Julius 

 Csesar had converted Transalpine Gaul as well as Britain 

 into a Roman province. The Franks, a race of Germans, and 

 the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons, also races of Germans, had 

 occupied the two countries. The conquering Northmen of 



1 Vide Macaulay, History of England. 



123 



