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In less than twenty-five years from the appearance of the Conqueror at Chester, the whole country had been overrun except the mountains of Gwynedd and the forests of the Deheubarth. This success is easily explained. For one thing, the Normans had trained, professional soldiers, who were well horsed and well armed.
But, although she was a gentle lady, in all things worthy to be beloved good, beautiful, sensible, and kind the King from the first neglected her. Her father and her six proud brothers, resenting this cold treatment, harassed the King greatly by exerting all their power to make him unpopular. Having lived so long in Normandy, he preferred the Normans to the English.
There were Germans, and French, and Normans, and Italians, and people from the different kingdoms of Spain, with knights, and barons, and earls, and bishops, and archbishops, and princes, and other dignitaries of all kinds without number. With such a heterogeneous mass there could be no common bond, nor any general and central authority.
At no time during the day's battle did so many Normans die as perished in that fosse. So those said who saw the dead. "The varlets who were set to guard the harness began to abandon it as they saw the loss of the Frenchmen when thrown back upon the fosse without power to recover themselves.
In 1066 their leader, Duke William, and his army crossed the English Channel and won the battle of Hastings, in which Harold, the last Anglo-Saxon king, was killed. William thus became king of England. Characteristics of the Normans. The intermixture of Teutonic and French blood had given to the Normans the best qualities of both races.
"I hope that in that day you will allow your faithful servant Ivo to retire to his ancestral manors in Anjou; for England will be too hot for him. Sire, you know not this man, a liar, a bully, a robber, a swash-buckling ruffian, who " and Ivo ran on with furious invective, after the fashion of the Normans, who considered no name too bad for an English rebel.
In the first year of her marriage, when Henry was anxious to win the favor of the English, he conformed so much to their ways that the scornful Normans used to call him and his young wife by the Saxon names of Godric and Godiva.
The Normans begged that some measures might be taken for their relief, and King Henry came, and, with Robert's consent, set things on a better footing; but meanwhile he was secretly making arrangements with the barons for the overthrow of his brother. In two years' time he had tempted over almost every baron to desert the cause of their master, and in 1106 prepared to wrest the dukedom from him.
"Confess you would call it meanness my huckstering with yonder young fool. I call it simplicity. Why throw away a shilling without need? Our race never did. A shilling is four men's bread: shall I disdain to defile my fingers by holding them out relief in their necessity? It is you who are mean you Normans not we of the ancient race. You have your vulgar measurement for great things and small.
We need only refer to England for a case in point: after the conquest and total subjugation of the people of that country by the ancestors of the nobility, the gallant Normans, the feudal system was introduced, and remained in full vigour for some centuries.
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