nited him to the
Englishmen among whom he settled along the Humber. William Longsword, the
son of Hrolf, though wavering towards France and Christianity, remained a
northman in heart; he called in a Danish colony to occupy his conquest of
the Cotentin, the peninsula which runs out from St. Michael's Mount to
the cliffs of Cherbourg, and reared his boy among the northmen of Bayeux
where the Danish tongue and fashions most stubbornly held their own. A
heathen reaction followed his death, and the bulk of the Normans, with
the child Duke Richard, fell away for the time from Christianity, while
new pirate-fleets came swarming up the Seine. To the close of the century
the whole people were still "Pirates" to the French around them, their
land the "Pirates' land," their Duke the "Pirates' Duke." Yet in the end
the same forces which merged the Dane in the Englishman told even more
powerfully on the Dane in France. No race has ever shown a greater power
of absorbing all the nobler characteristics of the peoples with whom they
came in contact, or of infusing their own energy into them. During the
long reign of Duke Richard the Fearless, the son of William Longsword, a
reign which lasted from 945 to 996, the heathen Norman pirates became
French Christians and feudal at heart. The old Norse language lived only
at Bayeux and in a few local names. As the old Northern freedom died
silently away, the descendants of the pirates became feudal nobles and
the "Pirates' land" sank into the most loyal of the fiefs of France.

[Sidenote: Duke William]

From the moment of their settlement on the Frankish coast, the Normans
had been jealously watched by the English kings; and the anxiety of
AEthelred for their friendship set a Norman woman on the English throne.
The marriage of Emma with AEthelred brought about a close political
connexion between the two countries. It was in Normandy that the King
found a refuge from Swein's invasion, and his younger boys grew up in
exile at the Norman court. Their presence there drew the eyes of every
Norman to the rich land which offered so tempting a prey across the
Channel. The energy which they had shown in winning their land from the
Franks, in absorbing the French civilization and the French religion, was
now showing itself in adventures on far-off shores, in crusades against
the Moslem of Spain or the Arabs of Sicily. It was this spirit of
adventure that roused the Norman Duke Robert to sail against E