CHAPTER II. Our Constitution coeval with our Nationality.-Thirteenth century the Date when each commences.-The Four Elements of our Nation. The Saxon, i. e. the Germanic, the chief Element.— Parts of the Continent whence our Germanic Ancestors came.Their Institutions, Political, Social, and Domestic.-Date of the Saxon Immigrations into this Island.-What Population did they find here ?—The British Element of our Nation, Romanized Celtic. -Primary Character and Institutions of the British Celts.Effect of Roman Conquests.-How far did the Saxons exterminate or blend with the Britons ?-Evidence of Language. Ir has been stated in the last chapter that Magna Carta is coeval with the commencement of our nationality; in other words, that we have had our present Constitution, as represented in Magna Carta, throughout the whole time of our true natural history, except some brief periods of revolutionary interruption. The proof of this depends on the date at which we fix the commencement of the history of the English nation, as a complete nation. This date is the 13th century.* The accuracy as well as the importance of this date * I am glad to be able to cite the high authority of Mr. Macaulay in support of the position that the history of the English nation commences in the 13th century. Mr. Ma caulay, in the 17th page of the first volume of his History, after speaking of the Great Charter as the first pledge of the reconciliation of the Norman and Saxon races, says― RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE CONSTITUTION. 13 will be more readily discerned, if we remember the difference that there is between the history of the English and the history of England ;-between the history of our nation, and the history of the island on which we now dwell. Our English nation is the combined product of several populations. The Saxon element is the most important, and may be treated as the chief one; but, besides this, there is the British (that is to say the Romanized Celtic), there is the Danish, and there is the Norman element. Each of these four elements of our nation has largely modified the rest; and each has exercised an important influence in determining our national character and our The "Here commences the history I Macaulay's History. See also, in connection with this subject, the first of Arnold's Lectures on Modern History. I do not agree with that great and good man in thinking that the Britons, who lived here before the coming over of the Saxons, are in no respect connected with us as our ancestors, and that, nationally speaking, the history of Cæsar's invasion has no more to do with us than the natural history of the animals which then inhabited our forests." But it was from his pages that I was first led to appreciate the paramount importance of the Germanic source of our nation, and also to realize the full meaning of the terms national" and "nationality." national institutions. It is not until we reach the period when these elements were thoroughly fused and blended together, that the history of the English can properly be said to begin. This period is the 13th century after the birth of our Saviour. It was then, and not until then, that our nationality was complete. By nationality is meant the joint result of unity as to race, language, and institutions. In the 13th century these unities were created. Let us prove this separately. First, with respect to race. Though the coming over of the Normans in the 11th century made up the last great element of our population, a long time passed away before it coalesced with the others. For at least a century and a half after the Conquest, there were two distinct peoples, the Anglo-Norman and the Anglo-Saxon, dwelling in this island. They were locally intermingled with each other, but they were not fellow-countrymen. They kept aloof from each other in social life, the one in haughty scorn, the other in sullen abhorrence. But when we study the period of the reigns of John, and his son and grandson, we find Saxon and Norman blended together under the common name, and with the common rights, of Englishmen. From that time forth, no part of the population of England looks on another part as foreigners; all feel that they are one people, and that they jointly compose one of the States of Christendom. Secondly, with respect to language. In the 13th century, our English language, such substantially as it still is, became the mother tongue of every Englishman, whether of Norman or of Saxon origin.* So, finally, with respect to our institutions; it *The earliest extant speci- as contra-distinguished from the men of the English language, Saxon and Semi-Saxon, is the was during this century that the Great Charter was obtained, and the statutes connected with and confirmatory of it were passed, in which we can trace the great primary principles of our Constitution. It was in this century that Parliaments, comprising an Upper House of Temporal and Spiritual Peers, and Lower House of Representatives of Counties and Boroughs, were first summoned. It was in this century that our legal system assumed its distinctive features, and was steadily enforced throughout the realm. It is clear, therefore, that it is at this period, that our true nationality commences; for our history, from this time forth, is the history of a national life, then complete and still in being. All before that period is a mere history of elements, and of the processes of their fusion. But it is a preliminary history that must be studied in order to comprehend aright the history that follows. In order to understand the Great Charter, we must catch the spirit of the age in which it was granted. To do this, we must form to ourselves a vivid and a true idea of the people that obtained it; and we must, for that purpose, trace the early career, we must mark the characteristics, and watch the permanent influence of each of the four elementary races by which the English people has been formed. Of these four elements the Anglo-Saxon is unquestionably the principal one. Our language alone decisively proves this; for it is still substantially the same language which our ancestors spoke in Germany before proclamation of Henry III. to the people of Huntingdonshire, A.D. 1258. See Latham on the "English Language," p. 77. The reader need hardly be re minded that, for the first century and-a-half after the Conquest, the Normans in England spoke French. they left the banks of the Eyder and the Elbe for the coasts of Britain.* We may, therefore, advantageously first see who and what the Anglo-Saxons were in their original homes; and then examine who and what the inhabitants of this island were whom the Anglo-Saxons found here. The subsequent immigration of the Danes, and the final influx of the Normans, will next be separately considered: and, then (after watching also the processes and the results of the partial fusion of these races, both that which took place with respect to the first three before the arrival of the Normans, and that which afterwards took place with respect to the Norman conquerors themselves, and those whom they subdued), we may proceed to the consideration of the first part of our immediate subject, to ascertain the condition of the various classes of the community at the time when the great national movement took place, by which King John was compelled to sign Magna Carta (A.D. 1215). The chief element of our nation is Germanic, and we have good cause to be proud of our ancestry. Freedom has been its hereditary characteristic from the earliest times at which we can trace the existence of the German race. The Germans, alone, of all the European nations of antiquity that Rome assailed, successfully withstood her ambition and her arms. They never endured either a foreign conqueror, or a domestic tyrant. Similarly proud and unblemished by servitude are the pedigrees of two more of the elements of our nation. The Danes and the Normans, who came among us, were and ever had been |