by a frightful dismemberment of the French duchy, from which the original Norman settlement had been cut off.  France had lost in Rouen one of her greatest cities, and she was cut off from the sea and from the lower course of her own river.  On the other hand, the French and the Norman dukes had found their interest in a close alliance; Norman support had done much to transfer the crown from Laon to Paris, and to make the Dux Francorum and the Rex Francorum the same person.  It was the adoption of the French speech and manners by the Normans, and their steady alliance with the French dukes, which finally determined that the ruling element in Gaul should be Romance and not Teutonic, and that, of its Romance elements, it should be French and not Aquitanian.  If the creation of Normandy had done much to weaken France as a duchy, it had done not a little towards the making of France as a kingdom.  Laon and its crown, the undefined influence that went with the crown, the prospect of future advance to the south, had been bought by the loss of Rouen and of the mouth of the Seine.

There was much therefore at the time of William’s accession to keep the French kings and the Norman dukes on friendly terms.  The old alliance had been strengthened by recent good offices.  The reigning king, Henry the First, owed his crown to the help of William’s father Robert.  On the other hand, the original ground of the alliance, mutual support against the Karolingian king, had passed away.  A King of the French reigning at Paris was more likely to remember what the Normans had cost him as duke than what they had done for him as king.  And the alliance was only an alliance of princes.  The mutual dislike between the people of the two countries was strong.  The Normans had learned French ways, but French and Normans had not become countrymen.  And, as the fame of Normandy grew, jealousy was doubtless mingled with dislike.  William, in short, inherited a very doubtful and dangerous state of relations towards the king who was at once his chief neighbour and his overlord.

More doubtful and dangerous still were the relations which the young duke inherited towards the people of his own duchy and the kinsfolk of his own house.  William was not as yet the Great or the Conqueror, but he was the Bastard from the beginning.  There was then no generally received doctrine as to the succession to kingdoms and duchies.  Everywhere a single kingly or princely house supplied, as a rule, candidates for the succession.  Everywhere, even where the elective doctrine was strong, a full-grown son was always likely to succeed his father.  The growth of feudal notions too had greatly strengthened the hereditary principle.  Still no rule had anywhere been laid down for cases where the late prince had not left a full-grown son.  The question as to legitimate birth was equally unsettled.  Irregular unions of all kinds, though condemned by the Church, were tolerated in practice, and were nowhere more