nquest, it developed itself much more durably. The clergy of
the land were far more closely and systematically bound to the Papacy;
thus it had become more learned and more active. The one sword helped
the other; just at this very time, the King and the Archbishop of
Canterbury were depicted as the two strong steers that drew the plough
of England.

But yet, below all this there existed a powerful element of
opposition. After the new order of things had existed more than eighty
years, among a portion of the Anglo-Saxon population the design was
started of putting a violent end to it, of destroying at one blow all
those foreigners who seemed its representatives, just as the Danes had
all been murdered on one day.

It was an evil thought, and all the more atrocious because manifold
ties had been already gradually formed between the two populations.
How could they ever become fused into one nation if the one was always
plotting the destruction of the other?

It was not merely by alliances of blood and family, but even still
more by great common political and ecclesiastical interests that the
English nationality, which contains both elements, was founded. And,
in truth, the leading impulse towards it was that the conquerors, no
less than the conquered, felt themselves oppressed by the yoke which
the two supreme authorities laid on them, and hence both combined to
oppose them. But centuries elapsed before this could be effected. The
first occasion for it was given when the two authorities quarrelled
with each other, and alternately called on the population to give its
voluntary aid.

For, as the authorities which represent the objective ideas are of
different origin, they have never in our Western Europe remained more
than a short time in complete harmony with each other. Each retains
its natural claim to be supreme, and not to endure the supremacy of
the other. The one has always more before its eyes the unity of the
whole, the other the needs and rights of the several kingdoms and
states. Amidst their antagonism European life has moulded itself and
made progress.

Close as their union was at the time of the Conquest of England, yet
even then their quarrel broke out. Though the Conqueror pledged
himself again to pay a tribute which the Anglo-Saxon kings had
formerly charged themselves with, and which had been long unpaid, yet
this was not sufficient for the Roman See: Gregory VII demanded to be
recognised as feudal l