queror, of these same Normans brave and valiant and conquering, proud and boastful and fond of good cheer, hard to control and needing to be kept under foot by their rulers.[1] Through all these accounts runs the same story of a high-spirited, masterful, unscrupulous race, eager for danger and ready for every adventure, and needing always the bit and bridle rather than the spur.
The contrast is not merely between the eleventh century and the twentieth, between a lawless race of pioneers and a race subdued and softened by generations of order and peace; the two types are present in the early days of Norman history. Among the conquerors of England a recent historian distinguishes "the great soldiers of the invading host...equally remarkable for foresight in council and for headlong courage in the hour of action, whose wits are sharpened by danger and whose resolution is only stimulated by obstacles; incapable of peaceful industry but willing to prepare themselves for war and rapine by the most laborious apprenticeship"; and over against them "the politicians...cautious, plausible, deliberate, with an immense capacity for detail, and an innate liking for routine; conscious in a manner of their moral obligations, but mainly concerned with small economies and gains; limited in their horizon, but quick to recognise superior powers and to use them for their own objects; indifferent
- ↑ Roman de Rou (ed. Andresen), ii, lines 9139-56.
