ancient law of England. The fiction became a fact; and the fact greatly helped in the process of fusion between Normans and English. William founded no new state; no new nation; no new constitution. He simply kept what he found; with such modification as his position made needful; and his work determined the later course of English history; and determined it to the lasting good of the English nation.… As far as mortal man can guide the course of things when he is gone, the course of our national history since William's day has been the result of William's character, and of William's acts. Well may we restore to him the surname that men gave him in his own day. He may worthily take his place as William the Great, alongside of Alexander, Constantine, and Charles. They may have wrought in some sort a greater work; because they had a wider stage to work on. But no man ever wrought a greater and more abiding work, on the stage that fortune gave him than he—qui dux Normannis, qui Cæsar praefuit Anglis. Stranger and conqueror, his deeds won him a right to a place among English statesmen; and no man that came after him has won a right to a higher place."
And he had a body. Green's History of the English People thus draws his picture: "The very spirit of the sea-robbers from which he sprung seemed embodied in his gigantic form; his enormous strength; his savage countenance; his desperate bravery; the fury of his wrath; the ruthlessness of his revenge. No Knight under heaven, his enemies confessed, was William's peer.No man could bend William's bow.His mace crashed through a ring of English warriors to the foot of the standard. He rose to his greatest heights in moments when other men despaired." No man who ever sat upon the throne of England was this man's match. Name your man who even came near him in bodily prowess! Princes and Kings are so beset with all forms of temptation that the wonder is that they come through and do as well as they do. We may later find an American ruler who might have bothered him—and bent his bow
