Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/156

 i 4 4 THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES and hence it was to Latin Christianity that the English missionaries Boniface (whose natural name was Winfried) and Willibrord converted the heathen Germans beyond the Rhine. We shall not here at great length relate the manner of the conquest which changed Britain into England, another of the 4. TheTeu- new Teutonic nations. But there are features of tonic Conquest the English conquest which must be brought into of England. comparison with the other Teutonic conquests. There was no movement of one solid mass under one leader, as with Goths or Franks; but a migration of kindred tribes under separate leaders, sometimes recognising a common war- lord. There was no establishment of a kingdom of England, but a gradual extension of the dominion of tribal chiefs until several kingdoms were set up, over which one king or another might claim a general supremacy by reason of his warlike powers ; but among which, as among the Goths or Lombards, there was no real unity. It was not till the coming of a foreign foe, the Danes, in the ninth century, and their con- quest of half the island, that a leader arose who was able to develop the idea of a common nationality which transformed the House of Wessex into the Royal House of England. But The Teutonic ** was * n England that the Teutonic state grew up State in in its most purely Teutonic form, unmodified by England. an y con t ac t w ith an already deeply rooted civilisa- tion. To the English state, modifications came afterwards, with its conquest by a Latinised power, the Normans. It was the Teutonic state in an already advanced state of development which was thus modified j whereas other Teutons were only in an early stage of political development when they were brought into direct contact with a Latin or Latinised civilisation. The Gothic and Lombard kingdoms perished, overthrown the one by the Saracens, the other after a long interval by the Franks j the English and Frankish dominions endured. When Theoderic was making himself master of Italy, Clovis and his Franks were making themselves masters of Gaul. 5. The The names by which the Frankish monarchs are Franks. familiar to us are derived from French literature, and are apt to make us forget that the Franks were Germans.