ueror in 1066, when he crossed the Channel to seize the English
Crown. Harold of England had no great fleet in any case; and what he
had was off the Yorkshire coast, where his brother had come to claim
the Crown, backed by the King of Norway. The Battle of Hastings, which
made William king of England, was therefore a land battle only. But
the fact that William had a fleet in the Channel, while Harold had not,
gave William the usual advantage in the campaign. From that day to
this England has never been invaded; and for the best of all
reasons--because no enemy could ever safely pass her fleet.

[Illustration: WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR'S TRANSPORTS]

The Normans at last gave England what none of her other Norsemen gave
her, the power of becoming the head and heart of the future British
Empire. The Celts, Danes, Jutes, and Anglo-Saxons had been fusing
together the iron of their natures to make one strong, united British
race. The Normans changed this iron into steel: well tempered,
stronger than iron could be, and splendidly fit for all the great work
of imperial statesmen as well as for that of warriors by land and sea.

The Normans were not so great in numbers. But they were very great in
leadership. They were a race of rulers. Picked men of Nordic stock to
start with, they had learnt the best that France could teach them:
Roman law and order and the art of founding empires, Frankish love of
freedom, a touch of Celtic wit, and the new French civilization. They
went all over seaboard Europe, conquerors and leaders wherever they
went. But nowhere did they set their mark so firmly and so lastingly
as in the British Isles. They not only conquered and became leaders
among their fellow-Norsemen but they went through most of Celtic
Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, founding many a family whose descendants
have helped to make the Empire what it is.

William the Conqueror built a fleet as soon as he could; for only a few
of the vessels he brought over from Normandy were of any use as
men-of-war. But there were no great battles on the water till the one
off the South Foreland more than a century after his death. He and the
kings after him always had to keep their weather eye open for Danes and
other rovers of the sea as well as for the navy of the kings of France.
But, except when Henry II went to Ireland in 1171, there was no great
expedition requiring a large fleet. Strongbow and other ambitious
nobles had then begun