William the Conqueror

Qui dux Normannis, qui Caesar praefuit Anglis.

Their work was to subdue England, soul and body; and they subdued it.

William refused homage to Gregory; but it is significant that Gregory asked for it.

Every man in the mixed assembly, mixed indeed in race and speech, the King’s own men and the men of other lords, took the oath and became the man of King William. On that day England became for ever a kingdom one and indivisible, which since that day no man has dreamed of parting asunder.

The king claiming by legal right, but driven to assert his right by the sword, was unlike both the foreign king who comes in by peaceful succession and the foreign king who comes in without even the pretext of law.

Ever since the coming of Augustine, English and Latin had been alternative tongues; after the coming of William English becomes less usual, and in the course of the twelfth century it goes out of use in favour of Latin.

Herein comes one of the most remarkable results of William’s coming. His greatest work was to make England a kingdom which no man henceforth thought of dividing.

England had before now been conquered, but never in a single fight. Alfred and Edmund had fought battle after battle with the Dane, and men had no mind to submit to the Norman because he had been once victorious. But Alfred and Edmund, in alternate defeat and victory, lived to fight again; their people had not to choose a new king; the King had merely to gather a new army. But Harold was slain, and the first question was how to fill his place.

Crowned king over the land, he would first strengthen himself in that part of the kingdom which he actually held.

never claimed the crown by conquest, as conquest is commonly understood.