Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/210

 198 THE LATER MIDDLE AGES met in the role of a crusader. The virtues of Louis achieved, in their own way, almost as much as the craft of Philip n. ±l T. Louis acquired the position of a sort of universal St. Louis. i-i i,, , arbitrator, because all men knew that his awards would be dictated, not by policy, but wholly by principle. He may fairly be regarded as the ideal of a Christian king, and the undoubted trust and confidence which he inspired gave the Crown an enormous prestige, which may be compared with that won by our own King Alfred nearly four centuries before. Thus, by the close of the crusading era, France had at last attained the possession of a strong central government in the control of the king. Hitherto we have said little about England, which remained almost outside the stream of European history until the Norman Conquest, and even after that time only appeared on the continental stage as an appanage of the greatest feudatory of the French Crown. But England was now about to intervene as an independent state, and a brief sketch of the course of her development becomes necessary. A Retrospec- Angles and Saxons in the course of the fifth and tive Sketch. sixth centuries had conquered all but the hilly regions of the west, from the Forth to the English Channel ; Angles pushing in from the east coast, Saxons from the south and south-east. The groups of conquerors set up separate kingdoms among which one or another was generally recognised as holding a vague supremacy, which was always liable to be wrested from it. In all, the general principles of government prevailed, which we have observed as characteristic of the Teutons. At the beginning of the ninth century the supremacy passed from the midland kingdom of Mercia to the southern kingdom of Wessex. But during the same century the Danes poured in, in increasing numbers, first as marauders, and then as conquerors. The Danish conquest was stayed by King Alfred of Wessex, who, however, found it politic to allow them to remain in Alfred and his partial occupation of the north-east half of Eng- Successors. .n6, under the supremacy of the King of Wessex as king of all England. Alfred's successors were able to