First direct dealings between England and France.
Different position of the two Williams.
Relation of England, Normandy, and France. condition of his promoting, or at least not thwarting, the policy of a sovereign of England. The appetite[1] which was now first awakened in Philip of Paris soon came to be shared by other princes, and it lasted in full force for many ages. Again, we have now for the first time direct political dealings between a purely insular King of England—we may forestall the territorial style when speaking of England as a state rather than of Englishmen as a nation—and a French King at Paris. The embassies which passed between Eadward and Henry, even when Henry made his appeal on behalf of Godwine,[2] hardly make an exception. William the Great had dealt with France as a Norman duke; if, in the latter part of his reign, he had wielded the strength of England as well as the strength of Normandy, he had wielded it, as far as France was concerned, wholly for Norman purposes. But William the Red, though his position arose wholly out of the new relations between England and Normandy, was still for the present a purely English king. The first years of Rufus and the first years of Henry the First are alike breaks in the hundred and forty years of union between England and Normandy.[3] Had not a Norman duke conquered England, an English king would not have been seeking to conquer Normandy; but, as a matter of fact, an English king, who had no dominions on the mainland, was seeking to conquer Normandy. And he was seeking to win it with
- ↑ Macaulay, Hist. Eng. iv. 265. "The Elector of Saxony . . . had, together with a strong appetite for subsidies, a great desire to be a member of the most select and illustrious orders of knighthood." For this last passion there was as yet no room, but William Rufus did a good deal towards bringing about the state of things in which it arose.
- ↑ N. C. vol. ii. p. 318.
- ↑ So are the Norman reigns of Geoffrey Plantagenet and his son Henry. But their position in Normandy was quite different from Robert's, while they claimed England in quite a different sense from the claims of Robert, and had—the son at least had—partisans there.
