Distinctions between Conqueror and Conquered. 131 



muscle and quickness of eye which proved of service to its 

 owner in the periodical tournaments or the sterner pastime of 

 war. Such a constant demand on a man's nerve and agility 

 must have prompted the Norman gentleman to a moderate use 

 of the pigment, morat, or hippocras, with which he daily washed 

 down his venison and spice-cake. Nor would late hours over a 

 gambling bout conduce to a cool head in the morrow's tourney ; 

 thus few men remained long awake after curfew had rung the 

 knell of all fires and lights. 



But what of the unfortunate conquered — the "greedy Saxon 

 swine," as he was contemptuously termed by his more abste- 

 mious conqueror ? Though elbowed out of all the choicest 

 lands, he still had to look for means of subsistence somewhere 

 within this island. Thane, ceorl, and villein were all, with a 

 contemptuous indifference to accuracy, classified under the one 

 despised title of " roturiers," by this foreign aristocracy. Like 

 the ranker at his regimental mess, or the self-made millionaire 

 elevated by his wealth into a higher social circle, the Saxon 

 must have been peculiarly sensitive to a contempt which his 

 own sense of inferiority had shown him to be merited. The 

 oppression and the scorn between them drove half the men of • 

 spirit out of the country to seek fortune where their swords 

 would be most likely to command a higher price. The gross 

 and the self-indulgent, no doubt, sought to dull the brain by 

 gluttony, and to drown their keener sense of indignity by 

 incessant draughts of mead. The ideal Saxon of Kingsley's 

 invention was no more and no less true to life than that of 

 Scott's ; and Hereward, the soldier of fortune, was as common 

 a type as Athelstane, the dull-headed thane. The Englishman 

 of position and property fared far worse than his humbler 

 countrymen, for the claims of hungry adventurers were num- 

 berless, and the Conqueror's only rewards were the appropriate 

 fruits of confiscation, so that few tenants-in-chief could boast 

 of Saxon blood. The lower the individual in the social scale, 

 the less likely was he to be worth spoliation, until, when we 

 arrive at the bondsman's class, we may doubt if many in- 

 dividuals realised much difference in the change of masters. 

 But the international struggle did not survive the first 



