needed the drilling and discipline of a century of Norman tyranny.[1]
Whether he was needed much or little, the Norman drill-master came and did his work, and when he had finished the two countries were in many respects alike. He left his mark on the English language and on English literature, which were submerged for three centuries under the French of the court, the castle, and the town, and in the process were permanently modified into a mixed speech. He left his mark on architecture in the great cathedrals of the Norman bishops and the massive castles with their Norman keeps. He made England a feudal society, however far it may have gone in that direction before, and its law, from that day to this, a feudal law. And he remade the central government under the strong hand of a masterful dynasty which compelled its subjects to will what the king willed. Whatever permanence we may assign to Anglo-Saxon local institutions,—and we cannot help granting them this in considerable measure,—it is not now held that there was any notable Anglo-Saxon influence upon the central administration. At best England before the Conquest was a loose aggregation of tribal commonwealths divided by local feeling and by the jealousies of the great earls, and its kingship did not grow stronger with process of time. The national assembly of wise men, whose persistence Freeman labored in vain to prove, became the feudal
- ↑ Stubbs, Benedict of Peterborough, ii, p. xxxv.
