CHAPTER III 
THE NORMANS 
1066—1 15-4 
1. WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR, 1066-1087 
23. The home of the Normans in France.—About the time 
of Alfred the Great, a bold sea-rover from Norway, named 
Rolf, succeeded in winning from the king of France a strip 
of land around the mouth of the Seine River, Here he 
settled with thousands of his Northmen, who were of the 
same blood as the Saxons and the Danes, Because their 
old home was Norway, these people called their new home 
Normandy and themselves Normans. Rolf married a 
French princess and was baptized a Christian. His people 
also became Christians, intermarried with the French, and 
adopted the French language. They were quick to yield to 
the softening influences of French ecivilization, and within 8 
hundred ycars they had become Frenchmen in language, 
customs, and religion. , 
24. Edward’s plan to bequeath his ecrowp.— When, in 
1042, Edward came to the throne of England he brought 
with him from Normandy, where he had spent his youth, a 
great crowd of Norman favourites and priests, to whom he 
zave the best places in the government and the church. 
He carried his liking for the Normans so far that he even 
promised to give, at his death, his crown to William, 
Duke of Normandy. Edward was a very pious man, 
30 pious indeed, that he was afterwards called 
“the Confessor,” but he did not rule England for the 
benefit of the English, nor, when he made his promise 
to William, was he thinking <<“ the welfare of his 
English subhjeects.