Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/191

A.D. 1154.] transmitted to Henry by his mother, Matilda. They forgot the haughty character of the empress-queen, and remembered only that she, and, through her, their new sovereign, was descended from Alfred the Great. Writers of the time, who either believed sincerely what they wrote, or were paid to influence the people in favour of their sovereign, affirmed that England now once more possessed a king of English race; that already there were many bishops and abbots of the same race, while of chiefs and nobles not a few had sprung from the intermixture of Norman and Saxon blood. They therefore held that the hatred hitherto existing between the two races would henceforth rapidly disappear. The opinions thus hopefully expressed were not justified by the actual circumstances, nor were they realised for a considerable time afterwards. It was no doubt true that since the time of the Conquest many Saxon women had been forcibly espoused by the Normans, but it would appear that the children of such marriages were far from regarding themselves as the brethren of the Saxon people whom they saw oppressed and degraded by the conquerors. They regarded their English blood as a stain which they were anxious to conceal by more than common harshness towards the nation from which their mothers had sprung.



In the early part of the reign of William the Conqueror, he had endeavoured to remove discord from the two nations under his rule by promoting matrimonial alliances between them, and to this end he had ordered women of his own country to some of the more powerful Saxon lords who remained free. Marriages of this kind, however, were few, and when the increased power of the Normans had reduced this conquered people to a condition of servitude, no Englishman was considered sufficiently noble to be worthy of the hand of a Norman woman. The few men of Saxon race who, by dint of flattery and subservience, succeeded in gaining the favour of the Norman princes, and in retaining possession of wealth and power, bore no proportion to the mass of their countrymen, who were reduced to slavery. Nor can it be supposed that the character of such men would prompt them to exertions in favour of their less fortunate kinsmen.

Henry II., however, was fully aware of the support which the Norman dynasty would receive from the intermixture of the two races. He encouraged the popular feeling with regard to his Saxon birth, and evinced no displeasure when the English monks, in describing his genealogy, avoided all allusion to his descent on the father's side. "Thou art a son," they said, "of the most glorious Empress Matilda, whose mother was Matilda, daughter of Margaret, Queen of Scotland, whose father was Edward, son of King Edmund Ironside, who was great grandson of the noble King Alfred." Predictions also were discovered, or invented, tending to raise still further the hopes of the people in the prosperity which would attend the new reign—hopes not destined to be realised. One of these prophecies, couched in the allegorical form in which such dark sayings were usually put forth, was attributed to King Edward the Confessor on his death-bed. That such stories produced their effect upon the minds of men may serve to show the superstitious tendencies of the age. It is related that one of the old chroniclers, in his attempt to reconcile the two races, reproduced a statement copied from a writer still more ancient, to the effect that William the Conqueror was himself descended from Edmund Ironside. "Edmund," said the chronicle. "had, in addition to his two sons, an only daughter, who was banished the country for her licentious conduct, and whose beauty having attracted the attention of Duke Robert of Normandy, she became his mistress, and gave birth to William, surnamed the Bastard."



It was evident that the people had every desire to separate Henry from that hatred which they still cherished towards the Norman race; and they designated him as the cornerstone which was to unite the two walls of the state. On the other hand, the Norman nobles saw their king in his true character as the descendant of this Conqueror, and