became French," concludes Powicke, "they did a great deal more than bring their national epic to a close. They permitted the English once more to become a nation, and they established the French state for all time."[1]
Viewed in this way, the end of Normandy almost seems more glorious than Normandy itself; as was said of Samson, "the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life." But of course in the larger sense the work of the Norman empire was not ended in 1204. For one thing, the administrative organization of the Norman duchy could not fail to exert an influence upon the French monarchy. In spite of the great progress made by the Capetian kings of the twelfth century, the Norman government still maintained its marked superiority as a system of judicial and fiscal administration, and Philip Augustus was not the man to neglect the lessons it might have for him. The nature and extent of Norman influence upon French institutions is a subject which is still dark to us and for lack of evidence may always remain dark; but there can be little doubt that Norman precedents were followed at various points in the development of the Parlement of Paris and in the elaboration of the French financial system. In the main, however, the influence was inevitably in the other direction, from France upon Normandy, not from Normandy upon
- ↑ The Loss of Normandy, p. 449.
