Little Arthur's history of England

A great change was made in England after the Duke of Normandy became king.

All the Normans spoke French, and the English spoke their own language; so at first they could not understand one another. By degrees the Normans learnt English; and some of their French words got into our language; but the old English was for the most part the same as that which you and I speak and write now.

The Normans were used to live in finer and larger houses than the English. So when they came to England they laughed at the long low wooden houses they found, and built high castles of stone for themselves, and made chimneys in their rooms, with the hearth on one side, instead of in the middle of the floor, as I told you the English had it in King Athelstane’s time.

There was one law the Normans made, which vexed the English very much.

In the old times, anybody who found a wild animal, such as a deer, or a hare, or a partridge, or pheasant, in his fields or garden, or even in the woods, might kill it, and bring it home for his family to eat. But when the Normans came, they would not allow anybody but themselves, or some of the English noblemen, to hunt and kill wild animals; and if they found a poor person doing so, they used either to put out his eyes, to cut off his hand, or to make him pay a great deal of money; and this they called “The Forest Law.” I must say I think the new King William behaved very cruelly about this.

He was so fond of hunting himself, although he would not let the poor Saxons hunt, that he turned the people out of a great many villages in Hampshire, and pulled down their houses, and spoilt their gardens, to make a great forest for himself and the Norman barons to hunt in, and that part of the country is still called “The New Forest.”

There was another rule which William made, and which the English did not like, but I am not sure whether it was wrong; and as he made the Normans obey it, as well as the English, it was fair at least.

I must tell you what it was; he made everybody put out their fires at eight o’clock at night, at the ringing of a church bell, which was called the Curfew Bell. Now, though it might have been of use to some people to keep a fire later, yet, as almost all the houses, both in the towns and the country, were built of wood, it was much safer for everybody to put out the fire early.

I should never have done, if I were to tell you all the changes that were made in dear old England by the Normans. But there is one I must try to explain to you, because it will help you to understand the rest of our history. When William was quite settled in England, which was not till after seven years, when the poor English were tired of trying to drive him and his Normans away, he took the houses and lands from the English thanes and earls, and gave them to the Norman noblemen, who were called barons.

This was unjust. But as the Normans had conquered the English, they were obliged to submit even to this. But William made an agreement with the barons to whom he gave the lands of the old thanes, that when he went to war they should go with him; that they should have those lands for themselves and their children, instead of being paid for fighting, as soldiers and their officers are now, and that they should bring with them horses and arms for themselves, and common men to fight also.

Some of the barons who had very large shares of land given to them, were bound to take a hundred men or more to the wars; some, who had less land, took fifty, or even twenty. The greatest barons had sometimes so much land, that it would have been troublesome to them to manage it all themselves; so they divided it among gentlemen whom they knew, and made them promise to go with them to the wars, and bring their servants, in the same manner as the great barons themselves did to the king.

Now these lands were called feuds, and the king was called the feudal lord of the barons, because they received the feud or piece of land from him, and they in return promised to serve him; and the great barons were called the feudal lords of the small barons, or gentlemen, for the same reason. And when these feuds were given by the king to the great baron, or by a great baron to another, the person to whom it was given knelt down before his feudal lord, and kissed his hand, and promised to serve him. This was called homage.

There is only one more thing that I shall tell you about William. He sent people to all parts of England, to see what towns and villages there were, and how many houses and people in them; and he had all the names written in a book called “Domesday Book.” Domesday means the day of judging, and this book enabled him to judge how much land he had, and how many men he could raise to fight for him.

At last King William died. He received a hurt from his horse being startled at the flames of a small town in France, which his soldiers had set on fire, and was carried to the Abbey of St. Gervase, near Rouen, where he died. He was Duke of Normandy and afterwards King of England, and is sometimes called William the Conqueror, because he conquered English Harold at the battle of Hastings. He was very cruel and very passionate; he took money and land from every one who offended him; and, as I have told you, vexed the English, and indeed all the poor, very much. And this is being a tyrant, rather than a king.

He had a very good wife, whose name was Matilda, but his sons were more like him than like their mother; however, you shall read about the two youngest of them, who came to be kings of England.