Note 167 — Dritte Periode.

It is certain that, when John became king, the distinction between Saxons and Normans was strongly marked, and that before the end of the reign of his grandson it had almost disappeared. In the time of Richard I., the ordinary imprecation of a Norman gentleman was „May I become an Englishman!“ His ordinary form of indignant denial was „Do you take me for an Englishman?“ The descendant of such a gentleman a hundred years later was proud of the English name. Mac Aulay’s History of England. (Tauchnitz edition. 12. Leipzig, 1849.) Vol. I. chp. 1. S. 16.