BOOKS.
THE NORMANS IN ENGLAND.* Tins history of England, if it may be judged from the volume before us, promises to be one of very considerable value. It is not a work of any great literary pretension, and, indeed, we could wish that the prose were better. The following sen- tence (on p. 168) is an instance of careless inorganic English, and is quoted as one of numerous cases in which the his- torian has disdained to follow the ordinary usages of the language :—" This act was accompanied by a renewal of the homage of the Norman barons to William, whether made necessary by the numerous rebellions of the past two years, or desirable to perfect the legal chain, now that William had been recognised as heir by his suzerain, a motive that would apply to all the barons." A sort of tradition seems to have grown up of late in this country that good prose should be written by slovenly historians, and good history by careless prose-writers. If it is worth while to undergo the immense labour of reconstructing from the original sources the history of obscure periods, it is surely worth while so to present the reconstruction that men will be compelled to read the work on the ground of its inherent literary merit. The function of history is to teach the current generation to have true views about the past, and so to make history for themselves in the light of experience. Great harm has been done to the evolution of the nation by the propagation of untrue views about the past by brilliant writers who, from the striking excellence of their literary manner, have com- pelled the attention of men. Why should the Devil have all the good tunes ? Why should the sound historian adopt a tradition of repellent dulness?
When we turn from select passages of Professor Adams's prose to his matter there is no such criticism to offer. In dealing with the period from the Conquest to the death of King John he gives us a more scientific presentment of an obscure period than we have yet had. Mr. Freeman's industry, no doubt, did a good deal to popularise the Norman period, and his long books on the Norman reigns "furnish a vast store of fact and suggestion of the greatest importance to the student." But he belongs to the pre-scientific age, and no longer carries the weight once attached to his historical views. There are three other writers dealing with the same period who have carefully examined the available authorities —Sir James Ramsay, Miss Kate Norgate, and Mr. H. W. C. Davis—and this volume will rank in value with the work of these able writers. None of them has produced a great history of the period, but all of them will be treated with respect when a Gibbon comes to write the history of the rise of the English people. But that will not be yet. We are still in the age of the monographist, and are still extremely ignorant of what we may call the cell-structure of the English nation in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. We are slowly learning how the nation in those ages lived and grew. The broad outlines we know fairly well, but the inner life, the self- consciousness of the people and its struggle for light, are still in a large measure hidden from us. The work of Dr. Stubbs, Dr. Vinogradoff, Professor Maitland, Professor Liebermann, Mr. Round, and others is gradually throwing light on the legal, economic, and Constitutional questions that were either created or modified by the Norman occupation of England. Explanatory and illuminating efforts by men of equal calibre will have to go on for many years before we can say with certainty what the Norman Conquest really means in the history of England. We should not like to go so far as to say with Mr. Davis that "with the Norman Conquest the nation passes at one bound from the Dark into the Middle Age." Before saying that we should like to know
• The Political History of England: Vol. II., The History of England from the Norman Conquest to the Death of John (10e6-1218). By George Burton Adams, Professor of History in Yale 'Univereity. London : Longman. and Co. [Th. 6d. wt.}
what Mr. Davis means by "the nation." We should prefei to say that the Norman Conquest so consolidated and unifiec the peoples living in England that they became in an organic sense a nation which could grow, and could in time Wail, the power of speech and the power of self-realisation. It is we think, wrong to infer that there was any passage from darkness to twilight. It was a passage from political in- coherence to potential political coherence. The modern counterpart of the Norman Conquest is the formation of the German Empire, the crushing into organic life and form of elements that suffered much in the process, but which could only by such a process con- tribute their share to the formation of a living nation. Whether Germany will ever attain to the organic coherence that England attained may, however, well be doubted. William of Normandy was a greater man than William of Prussia, for while he crushed England mercilessly into coherent form, he never subordinated this island to Normandy as the Emperor William I. subordinated Germany to Prussia ; and William II. of England was a greater man than William IL of Germany, for he pursued his father's merciless policy of consolidation, and did not allow vague ambitions of Continental or colonial dominion to interfere with the com- plete Normandising of his island kingdom.
The Norman Conquest, however, did more than vitalise and incorporate the abundant material for a national life that William found. Had England gone on in the old Saxon way, without touch or kinship with the Continent of Europe, it might have become a corporate nation, but it never could have become great. It would have possessed the eternal isolation of Iceland. Professor Adams points out with great justice that it was the mission of the Conquest to prevent this, and "to bring her into the full current of the active and progressive life of Christendom." England before the Con- quest had been an outpost of Christianity for perhaps eight centuries. She had never entered into, had never formed part of the growth of, Christendom as a social and spiritual process environing the nations, and bringing them into vital relation- ship. The Norman Conquest led England within the move- ment that Hildebrand was to develop, and in doing so brought her into vital touch with Europe. On this point it is useful to quote from Professor Adams in a characteristic passage :—
"In general the Conquest incorporated England closely with that organic whole of life and achievement which we call Christendom. This was not more true of the ecclesiastical side of things than of the political or constitutional. But the Church of the eleventh century included within itself relatively many more than the Church of to-day of those activities which quickly respond to a new stimulus and reveal a new life by increased production. The constitutional changes involved in the Conquest, and directly traceable to it through a long time of descent, though more slowly realised and for long in less striking forms, were in truth destined to produce results of far greater per- manence and a wider influence. The final result of the Norman Conquest was a constitutional creation, new in the history of the world."
We fully agree with this wise and impressive view of the results of the Conquest, though we are inclined to lay greater
stress than is laid by Professor Adams on the economic changes, penetrating the very heart of the nation, that were uncon- sciously involved in the Norman policy. The fundamental modifications of the loose Saxon manorial system both knit the nation together and gave a new strange impetus to economic facts. It is not sufficient to attribute the Constitu- tional creation of England to its incorporation into Continental Christendom. We have to consider social and economic changes that never took root in Europe, but which gave a peculiar character to English civilisation. But we must thank Professor Adams for his " long " view of the results of the Conquest, a view which, while it recognises the im- portance of the immediate modifications that the Normans achieved in the fields of law and government, yet sees that we have to look for the ripe fruit of the Norman invasion in later ages when the nation which the Conqueror rendered a potential fact had become a personality that held, as we believe it still holds, the balance of Europe in its hands. In some details we are not in accord with Professor Adams. We think the Conquest cannot be spoken of as beginning "a new era of learning." It is true that some schools were founded, and that the spread of the monastic
system made the study of Latin systematic; but, in truth, the Conqueror threw back the growth of general education
by the provision that the Anglo-Norman dialect was to be the sole medium of instruction. It is a curious fact that the troubled reign of Stephen saw more advance in education than was obtained under the first three Norman Kings.
We have not space in which even to indicate the very elaborate and careful treatment that Professor Adams gives
to the whole period which he has chosen. He has used the
evidence of the chronicles carefully and fully ; but we could wish that the economic questions relating to law and commerce had been given a larger share of space. There is one point made which is too often forgotten. We are apt to exaggerate the constructive genius of Henry II.
The seed of much, and perhaps of nearly all, that this great Monarch accomplished was sown by his grandfather, Henry I. The famous " scutage " system of taxation—a form of taxa- tion, we are rightly told, "destined to have a great influence on the financial and military history of England, and perhaps even a greater on its constitutional history "—must now be definitely attributed to Henry I., and we find that in every field Henry II. was carrying out the logical development of the arrested ideas which Henry I. had formulated. The reign of Stephen, with the opportunity that it gave for the extension of the influence of the Church, and the adoption by the Church of England of the great and Imperial conceptions of Hildebrand, made, however, the problem of the Second Henry more complex, and rendered necessary that dualism between Church and State which slowly, but inevitably, involved the great breach with Rome more than four hundred years later. In dealing with the reign of John and the granting of the Great Charter, we think Professor Adams would have done well if he had made some use of Mr. McKechnie's admirable work. He would then have seen reason to doubt his statement that "the Great Charter was drawn up and sealed on June 15th, 1215." The evidence of the Close Rolls is in favour of June 19th, and there appears little doubt that this was the actual date. It is, perhaps, a small matter, but Mr. McKechnie's work is of such great value that no historian can afford to neglect its clear and reasoned statements on all the questions which centre round the scene at Runnymede, and on the economic facts which led up to, and away from, that momentous Conference. But on the whole, as we have said, we can heartily recommend the use of this book, and it is with pleasure that we recognise the valuable work which American historians are doing in these early fields. There are, as we have said, blots on the 'scutcheon. It is misleading, for instance, to deal with a rather serious matter, to say that "the machinery of the jury was certainly introduced into England by the first Norman King." No jury-form now known to the Anglo-Saxon world was in shape even as late as 1215. This should have been indicated, with the statement that the idea from which such forms sprang had been current from the date of the Conquest. But we have no desire to be over critical in welcoming an extremely conscientious and careful volume, which will add much to the considerable reputation of its author.
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