357 
the reduction of Devonshire * And then we find that the con- 
querors, instead of slaughtering the vanquished without mercy 
allowed them equal rights with themselves, so that in a few 
years the victors and vanquished were blended into one people 
Again, while England was still divided into six or seven 
kingdoms we find the genius of Christianity, ever tending to 
unity, had already created a National Church under the great 
Archbishop Theodore, and had thus anticipated the time when 
the people of these islands should dwell peaceably together 
under one sceptre.f The Penitentials of Theodore and Bede 
were the forerunners of the laws of Ina and Offa ; and the 
spectacle now often seen of kings renouncing the vanities of 
pomp and power for a life of contemplation and piety, paved the 
way for the highest ideal of all, the saintly monarch who prac- 
tised renunciation of self without relinquishing the kindly 
crown. The life of Alfred, a life simply impossible to Hengist 
or Horsa, to /Ella or Cerdic, is itself a proof of what just four 
centuries of Christianity had done for this country. At once 
unaffectedly pious and severely just, as free from superstition 
or prejudice as he was from ambition or selfishness, he not 
only rid his kingdom from foreign foes, not only restored 
learning and protected religion, but he displayed to the world 
the first example it had ever seen of a community in which the 
first object was the maintenance of peace, and in which equal 
justice was secured between man and man, on the foundation 
ot the best and highest of all moral codes, that which was pro- 
claimed by Jesus Christ. Nor, in the most rapid glance at our 
history before the Conquest, ought we to omit all reference 
to the marvellous transformation effected by Christianity in 
the character and principles of Cnut. And when England, 
corrupted by prosperity, and needing purification, had fallen 
under a foreign yoke, what was it once more that lightened the 
burden of the Conquest, and made Normans and Saxons feel 
that there was a common bond which united them together? 
S Christian Church. “ The clergy,” says Professor 
Stubbs, felt their vows and spiritual relations to be a much 
more real tie than mere nationality "J They had in former 
* freeman, Norman Conquest, Introduction. 
vAS® SaX i° n Chronicle records how Synods of the whole Church were to 
anr? Se<5 al f H Cal \ ons of the Council of Hertford, in Haddan 
p 245 bS d0Cuments - See also Stubbs, Constitutional History, vol * 
t Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, vol. i. p 223 
2 B 2 
i. 
