Assassination was an event of daily occurrence. Many Normans
suddenly disappeared leaving no trace. The corpses of many were
found bearing the marks of violence. Death by torture was
denounced against the murderers, and strict search was made for
them, but generally in vain; for the whole nation was in a
conspiracy to screen them. It was at length thought necessary to
lay a heavy fine on every Hundred in which a person of French
extraction should be found slain; and this regulation was
followed up by another regulation, providing that every person
who was found slain should be supposed to be a Frenchman, unless
he was proved to be a Saxon.

During the century and a half which followed the Conquest, there
is, to speak strictly, no English history. The French Kings of
England rose, indeed, to an eminence which was the wonder and
dread of all neighbouring nations. They conquered Ireland. They
received the homage of Scotland. By their valour, by their
policy, by their fortunate matrimonial alliances, they became far
more popular on the Continent than their liege lords the Kings of
France. Asia, as well as Europe, was dazzled by the power and
glory of our tyrants. Arabian chroniclers recorded with unwilling
admiration the fall of Acre, the defence of Joppa, and the
victorious march to Ascalon; and Arabian mothers long awed their
infants to silence with the name of the lionhearted Plantagenet.
At one time it seemed that the line of Hugh Capet was about to
end as the Merovingian and Carlovingian lines had ended, and that
a single great monarchy would spread from the Orkneys to the
Pyrenees. So strong an association is established in most minds
between the greatness of a sovereign and the greatness of the
nation which he rules, that almost every historian of England has