both of the East and of the West fly before his arms. A third,
the Ulysses of the first crusade, was invested by his fellow
soldiers with the sovereignty of Antioch; and a fourth, the
Tancred whose name lives in the great poem of Tasso, was
celebrated through Christendom as the bravest and most generous
of the deliverers of the Holy Sepulchre.

The vicinity of so remarkable a people early began to produce an
effect on the public mind of England. Before the Conquest,
English princes received their education in Normandy. English
sees and English estates were bestowed on Normans. The French of
Normandy was familiarly spoken in the palace of Westminster. The
court of Rouen seems to have been to the court of Edward the
Confessor what the court of Versailles long afterwards was to the
court of Charles the Second.

The battle of Hastings, and the events which followed it, not
only placed a Duke of Normandy on the English throne, but gave up
the whole population of England to the tyranny of the Norman
race. The subjugation of a nation by a nation has seldom, even in
Asia, been more complete. The country was portioned out among the
captains of the invaders. Strong military institutions, closely
connected with the institution of property, enabled the foreign
conquerors to oppress the children of the soil. A cruel penal
code, cruelly enforced, guarded the privileges, and even the
sports, of the alien tyrants. Yet the subject race, though beaten
down and trodden underfoot, still made its sting felt. Some bold
men, the favourite heroes of our oldest ballads, betook
themselves to the woods, and there, in defiance of curfew laws
and forest laws, waged a predatory war against their oppressors.