Note (22) — Chapter II

I do not remember anything in any of the writers of Henry the Second’s time to justify the popular notions about “Normans and Saxons” as two distinct and hostile bodies. Nor do we as yet hear many complaints of favour being shown to absolute foreigners in preference to either, though it is certain that many high preferments, especially in the Church, were held by men who were not English in either sense. The peculiar position of Henry the Second was something like that of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, that of a prince ruling over a great number of distinct states without being nationally identified with any of them. Henry ruled over England, Normandy, and Aquitaine, but he was neither English, Norman, nor Gascon.