me into existence with the conquest by the duke of
Normandy in the year 1066.

*6. The Period following the Norman Conquest.*--Normandy was a province
of France lying along the shore of the English Channel. Its line of
dukes and at least a considerable proportion of its people were of the
same Scandinavian or Norse race which made up such a large element in
the population of England. They had, however, learned more of the arts
of life and of government from the more successfully preserved
civilization of the Continent. The relations between England and
Normandy began to be somewhat close in the early part of the eleventh
century; the fugitive king of England, Ethelred, having taken refuge
there, and marrying the sister of the duke. Edward the Confessor,
their son, who was subsequently restored to the English throne, was
brought up in Normandy, used the French language, and was accompanied
on his return by Norman followers. Nine years after the accession of
Edward, in 1051, William, the duke of Normandy, visited England and is
said to have obtained a promise that he should receive the crown on
the death of Edward, who had no direct heir. Accordingly, in 1065,
when Edward died and Harold, a great English earl, was chosen king,
William immediately asserted his claim and made strenuous military
preparations for enforcing it. He took an army across the Channel in
1066, as Caesar had done more than a thousand years before, and at the
battle of Hastings or Senlac defeated the English army, King Harold
himself being killed in the engagement. William then pressed on toward
London, preventing any gathering of new forces, and obtained his
recognition as king. He was crowned on Christmas Day, 1066. During the
next five years he put down a series of rebellions on the part of the
native English, after which he and his descendants were acknowledged
as sole kings of England.

The Norman Conquest was not, however, a mere change of dynasty. It led
to at least three other changes of the utmost importance. It added a
new element to the population, it brought England into contact with
the central and southern countries of the Continent, instead of merely
with the northern as before, and it made the central government of the
country vastly stronger. There is no satisfactory means of discovering
how many Normans and others from across the Channel migrated into
England with the Conqueror or in the wake of the Conquest, but there
is no doub