Characteristics of the Normans.—­The intermixture of Teutonic and French blood had given to the Normans the best qualities of both races.  The Norman was nimble-witted, highly imaginative, and full of northern energy.  The Saxon possessed dogged perseverance, good common sense, if he had long enough to think, and but little imagination.  Some one has well said that the union of Norman with Saxon was like joining the swift spirit of the eagle to the strong body of the ox, or, again, that the Saxon furnished the dough, and the Norman the yeast.  Had it not been for the blending of these necessary qualities in one race, English literature could not have become the first in the world.  We see the characteristics of both the Teuton and the Norman in Shakespeare’s greatest plays.  A pure Saxon could not have turned from Hamlet’s soliloquy to write:—­

  “Where the bee sucks, there suck I."[1]

Progress of the Nation, 1066-1400.—­The Normans were specially successful in giving a strong central government to England.  The feudal system, that custom of parceling out land in return for service, was so extended by William the Conqueror, that from king through noble to serf there was not a break in the interdependence of one human being on another.  At first the Normans were the ruling classes and they looked down on the Saxons; but intermarriage and community of interests united both races into one strong nation before the close of the period.

There was great improvement in methods of administering justice.  Accused persons no longer had to submit to the ordeal of the red-hot iron or to trial by combat, relying on heaven to decide their innocence.  Ecclesiastical courts lost their jurisdiction over civil cases.  In the reign of Henry II. (1154-1189), great grandson of William the Conqueror, judges went on circuits, and the germ of the jury system was developed.

Parliament grew more influential, and the first half of the fourteenth century saw it organized into two bodies,—­the Lords and the Commons.  Three kings who governed tyrannically or unwisely were curbed or deposed.  King John (1199-1216) was compelled to sign the Magna Charta, which reduced to writing certain foundation rights of his subjects.  Edward II. (1307-1327) and Richard II. (1377-1399) were both deposed by Parliament.  One of the reasons assigned far the deposition of Richard II. was his claim that “he alone could change and frame the laws of the kingdom.”

The ideals of chivalry and the Crusades left their impress on the age.  One English Monarch, Richard the Lion-Hearted (1189-1199) was the popular hero of the Third Crusade.  In Ivanhoe and The Talisman Sir Walter Scott presents vivid pictures of knights and crusaders.

We may form some idea of the religious spirit of the Middle Ages from the Gothic cathedrals, which had the same relative position in the world’s architecture as Shakespeare’s work does in literature.  Travelers often declare that there is to-day nothing in England better worth seeing than these cathedrals, which were erected in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries.[2]