to the Norman yoke; they kept alive in their hearts that proud spirit of
personal independence, which they brought with them from the moors of
Denmark and the dales of Norway; and they kept alive, too, though in
abeyance for a while, those free institutions which were without a doubt
the germs of our British liberty.

They were a changed folk since first they settled in that Danelagh;--since
first in the days of King Beorhtric, "in the year 787, three ships of
Northmen came from Haeretha land, and the King's reeve rode to the place,
and would have driven them up to the King's town, for he knew not what men
they were: but they slew him there and then"; and after the Saxons and
Angles began to find out to their bitter bale what men they were, those
fierce Vikings out of the dark northeast.

But they had long ceased to burn farms, sack convents, torture monks for
gold, and slay every human being they met, in mere Berserker lust of
blood. No Barnakill could now earn his nickname by entreating his
comrades, as they tossed the children on their spear-points, to "Na kill
the barns." Gradually they had settled down on the land, intermarried with
the Angles and Saxons, and colonized all England north and east of Watling
Street (a rough line from London to Chester), and the eastern lowlands of
Scotland likewise. Gradually they had deserted Thor and Odin for "the
White Christ"; had their own priests and bishops, and built their own
minsters. The convents which the fathers had destroyed, the sons, or at
least the grandsons, rebuilt; and often, casting away sword and axe, they
entered them as monks themselves; and Peterborough, Ely, and above all
Crowland, destroyed by them in Alfred's time with a horrible destruction,
had become their holy places, where they decked the altars with gold and
jewels, with silks from the far East, and furs from the far North; and
where, as in sacred fortresses, they, and the liberty of England with