HERO OF TWO NATIONS.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13975, 9 August 1909, Page 3

HERO OF TWO NATIONS.

lii "William the Conqueror and the Rule of the Moment", Frank M. Sten-t-on, M.A., Oxford, gives the public the latest of the Heroes of the Nations series, and deals with what to an Englishman must ever remain a period of absorbing interest. Mr Stenton has done liis work of engaging and maintaining our interest with thoroughness. Pie looks before and after, showing us how the expansion of Scandinavia and the disturbances to which it led in the political life of England made the island a comparatively easy prey to the strong hand of Normandy". He vividly pictures tfie warring elements and the loosely strung social system which led to the downfall of Harold and the substitution of order for chaos under the more perfect administrative system of the Norman barons.

During tho hundred years prior to the Conquest groat movements were on foot in nearly every country in Europe. The Normans were revolutionising the art of war. The Spanish kingdoms were trving their voting strength in the first battles of the great crusades which fill their mediaeval history; in Italy the great conception of the Church purified and independent of the feudal world was slowlv drawing towards its realisation. England has nothing of the kind to show ; her isolation from the current of Continental life was almost complete, and the great Danish struggle of the ninth centurv had Droved to he the last work undertaken in - independent Emdand for the cause of European civilisation. In Alfred, the protagonist of that struggle, the Royal house of AVessex' had given liirth to a national hero, hut no" one had completed the tn«k which he left unfulfilled. To an intimate, careful, and livolv narrative of the time of "William's minority down io his dramatic death, the biographer brings the art of the illustrator, and by means of pictures of somls. siege*. :ibbeys. portions of the Hayeiix- t:i'«-strv, ' and facsimiles <>f Do'mosdav lliol- mvos colour to the grev outlines of history. No chanter, perhaos. more reveals tho gift of (he writer for li.ipnv cxivisi'ion th.'m that which l.'is n Hood ..I' light- fnll noon 'Domesday Hook itself. \\'r>. see Englishmen and Frenchmen alike —drawn the humblest <-!i«sc= —assisting in this great inquest, the forerunner of the Plan'""cunt Assizes n»d of the jursvsfem. The inouo=*. indeed, formed a permanent basis for the settlement

and adjustment of conflicting claims, although at tin' moment ot making it was nob. always regarded with approval, us the iiaine of tin- hook itself testifies. One must n-inei'iber iliat "Domesday" is not the official title. but the -'Book of Winchester." named after the town where the records were kept. How did the volume come to be known by its popular title? I\lr Stonton thinks—and one is willing to accept his belief—that Rich.-ml Eitz Neal. writing in tin- reign of Hcnrv IT.. li!<s hit the truth:

"This book is called by the natives ' Domosdoi.' that is, by a metaphor, the day of judgment, for a* (he sentence of the strict nv.r] terrible last scrutiny may by no craft be evaded, sr when a arises '■oncoming those matters which are wri 4i en in this book it is '•' nsdied. ii"d its t-ntee-c i»iv net |.r> impugned or. refused with safety.''