Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1847-05-20
VOL. XII, NO. 27.---WHOLE NO. 2l1a.

great Glamour arose among the English
troops ofthe Royal army -" Ropes-ropes
bring ropes and let us hang this traitor
vi D'shop and his accomplices. O king,
why uost thou let him retreat in safety. He
Is not worthy to live, the crafty villain the
murderer OF SO many thousands of men!"
On nearing these and similar imprecations.
the naughty prelate who had said hirh mass
at Hastings and blessed the Norman host
fastened out of England never to return.
The historian of the Conquest draws the
following picture of England when William
had done his work -
Z" In terminating the recital of the events
which have Just been laid before the reader,
the chroniclers of English birth give way to
deep and touching lament over the miseres
of their nation - 1t cannot be doubted
some of them exclaim, that it is Gods will
that we shall no longer be a people-that
we shall no longer possess our national hon
or and security Others complain that the
name Englishman has become Upprobrious.
Nor was 1t from the pens of contemporaries
alone that such complainings escaped the
remembrance of heavy calamity aud of a
great national disgrace is constantly recur-
ring, from time to time, in the works writ
ten by descendants of the Anglo-Saxons, al
though in less impressive manner as the
all involving tide of ages swept past Even
so recently as the fifteenth century, the dis
tincton of ranks in England is declared to
have sprung from the Conquest: and mo-
nastic writer who has not been CHARGED with
entertaining revolutionary theories, wrote
the following remarkable words IF there
is among us so great difference of cond-
tlOns, it is not to be wondered at; for there
is diversity of races {: and if there is d.
mong us so little mutual confidence and af-
lection, it is because we are not of one
blood. Finally, writer who fourished in
the beginning of the seventeenth century,
recalls to mind the Norman Conquest by
the Northumberland of .Sorrog. He
speaks in terms of compassion of the disn-
herited and despolled families who had been
sunk into the class of artisans, of peasants,
and many of them of paupers. This is the
last sorrowful glance cast back, through the
mist of ages, on that great event which es-
tablshed in England a race ofkings, mobiles
and warriors of foreign extraction
eff, collecting in his own mind all the
facts detailed in the foregoing narration, the
reader wishes to form ust idea of England
upon its conquest by William of Norman
dy, he must figure to himself not a mere
change of political rule, nor the triumph Of
one or two competitors, but the intrusion of
a nation into the bosom of another people,
which it came to destroy, and the scattered
| fragments of which it retained as am integ-
raj portion of the new system of society, in
the status merely of personal property. or
to use the stronger language of records and
deeds, of a clothing to the soiL He must
not picture to himself, on the one hand,
William, the King and desp6t; on the 9TH
er, simply his subjects, nigh and low, rich
and poor, all inhablting England and, con-
sequently, all English He must bear in
mind that there were two distinct nations
the old Anglo-Saxon race and the Norman
invaders, dwelling intermingled on the same
soil or rather lie might contemplate two
countries-the one possessed by the Nor
mans, wealthy and exonerated from capita
ton and public burdens the other, that is,
the Saxon, enslaved, and oppressed with
| land tax: the. former full of spacious man
sions, of walled and moated castles the
latter scattered over with matched cabins
and ancient walls in state of diapidation:
this, peopled with the happy and the idle,
with soldiers and courtiers knights and no
bles; that, with men in misery and condemn
ed to labor with peasants and artisans
On the one, he beholds luxury and inso-
lcnce,--on the other, poverty and envy-not
the envy of the poor at the sight of the OPP
ulence of those born to opulence but that
malignant envy, although justice be on its
side, which the despoiled cannot but enter
tain in looking upon the spoilers. Lastly,
to complete the picture, these lands are in
some sort interviewer with each other they
meet at every point; and yet they are more
distinct, more completely separated, than
if the ocean rolled between them. Each
has its language, and speaks a language for
eign to the other French is the Court lam
guage, used in all the palaces, castles, and
mansions, in the abbeys and monasteries,-
in all places where wealth aud power offer
their attractions; while the ancient language
of the country is heard only at the tiresides
of the poor and the serfs For a long time
these two idioms were propogated without
intermXture,-the one being the mark of
noble, the other of ignobe birth"