Normandy, in its widest extent, reached on the eastern side to the rivers Eu and Epte, of which the Eu empties itself into the English Channel near the town of that name, while the Epte flows in the opposite direction and joins the Seine near Vernon. These streams form the boundary during nearly, but not quite, the whole of their course. Along the Epte the boundary of the duchy forsakes that of the ecclesiastical province, as the diocese of Rouen stretched a considerable way on the French side of that river. To the west Normandy is parted from Britanny by the border stream of Couësnon, but the shape of the coast makes the actual frontier very small. To the south the boundary of Normandy towards the duchy of France and the great counties which were parted off from it mainly followed the ecclesiastical frontier. But the diocese of Séez stretched beyond the duchy, while the conquests of William I. added to Normandy part of the diocese of Le Mans, and therefore of the province of Tours. The land thus marked out took in the districts of Caux, Talou, Rouen, Evreux, Lisieux, Bayeux (Bessin), Avranches, and Coutances (Cotentin, pagus Constantinus), with the greater part of the Hiesmois and about half the Vexin. This last was often a disputed ground between Normandy and France.

But the main feature of the country is its sea-coast and its great river. A glance at the map (Plate XIII., vol. ix.) will show that the coast of Normandy, long as it seems, is little more than the mouth of the Seine. To the west that mouth is guarded by the peninsula of Coutances, the Danish land which, it has been remarked, is the only peninsula in Europe, besides the older Danish land, which points to the north. To the west this peninsula presents a bold front to the Atlantic, forming with the Breton coast a bay in which lie the Norman islands, Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, Sark, and some smaller ones. Normandy, in fact, was the seaboard of France in the strict sense, the coast lying between Britanny on the one side and Flanders on the other. It is that part of the Continent which lies most directly opposite Britain. The Norman duchy, in short, as long as it had an independent being, was interposed between England and France; and in that position lies the key to its whole history.

The chief city of the duchy was always the ecclesiastical metropolis of Rouen (Rothomagus), the great city of the lower Seine. It is to be noticed that Rouen, like the cities of southern Gaul, keeps its own local n∑tme and has not taken the name of a tribe. Evreux, Séez, Bayeux, Lisieux, Avranches, preserve tribe names. The name Constantia or Coutances belongs of course to the later Roman nomenclature of imperial times. Other towns which figure in Norman history, as Caen, Falaise, Alençon, are of later origin. Havre de Grâce dates only from the 16th century, long after the loss of Norman independence.

In the divisions of modern France, Normandy answers to the departments of Lower Seine (cap. Rouen), Eure (cap. Evreux), Orne (cap. Alençon), Calvados (cap. Caen), Manche (cap. St Lo), and to the modern dioceses of Rouen, Evreux, Séez, Bayeux, and Coutances. The boundaries of Rouen and Evreux have been changed; Lisieux has been joined to Bayeux, and Avranches to Coutances. The archbishop of Rouen still keeps the title of primate of Normandy; otherwise the name of the duchy has gone out of formal use.

It must be remembered that the land to which the Northmen thus permanently gave their name was only one of several Scandinavian settlements in Gaul, though it was the greatest and the only lasting one. Nor was the whole of the land which became the Norman duchy occupied at once. The whole second half of the 9th century was largely taken up in both Gaul and Britain with Scandinavian inroads, which in both countries led to important Scandinavian settlements. Settlement in Britain came first, and the great settlement in Gaul seems to have been made after its model. By the peace of Wedmore, Aelfred found his own West-Saxon kingdom untouched and indeed enlarged. But a large part of England, over which he claimed at most a vague external supremacy, was left to the Danish invaders. Their king embraced Christianity, and, like his English predecessors, accepted a formal West-Saxon supremacy. A variety of later causes made the history of the Scandinavian settlement in England to differ widely from that of the Scandinavian settlement in Gaul; but in their beginnings the two are exactly alike. The smaller Scandinavian settlements, those of Hasting at Chartres, of Ragnald at the mouth of the Loire, had no historical importance. The settlement of Rolf at Rouen grew into the duchy of Normandy. The treaty of Clair-on-Epte followed the model of that of Wedmore. The Scandinavian invader embraced Christianity, and he became the man of the king of the Western kingdom. But he received no part of the king’s immediate territory. His settlement was made wholly at the cost of the duke of the French. The only difference was that the duke of the French still went on reigning at Paris, though no longer at Rouen, while the English dynasties of Mercia, East Anglia, and Deira came altogether to an end. But the two settlements are exactly alike in this, that the converted Northman becomes the man of the king, though the settlement is not made at the cost of the king’s immediate dominions. In both cases the king is strengthened, though in different ways. The West-Saxon king received an actual increase of immediate territory in the shape of that part of Mercia which formed the lordship of Aethelred and Aethelflaed. The Carolingian king received no increase of territory, but his position was distinctly bettered when the great and threatening duchy of France was split into the two rival duchies of France and Normandy. That Normandy was cut off from France in the strict sense, from the duchy of the house of Paris, is a point in its history which must always be remembered. It is the key to that abiding rivalry between France and Normandy which was inherent in the position and history of the two lands. No momentary policy on the part of their rulers could ever get over it. It lived on in truth to become no unimportant element in the general history of Europe. The close connexion which arose between Normandy and England handed on to England the inheritance of rivalry which had first begun between France and Normandy, an inheritance which England kept in its fulness for ages after its separation from Normandy. It is likely enough—considering the position of the two kingdoms, we may call it certain—that, had a separate state of Normandy never existed, a rivalry between England and France would have arisen out of some other cause. As a matter of fact, it was out of the older rivalry between France and Normandy that it did arise.

The settlement of Clair-on-Epte and the beginning of the Norman state are commonly placed in the year 912. There seems some reason to think that it may have happened a few years later. There is no thoroughly trustworthy account. The writers in the Western kingdom plainly say as little as they can about the matter; they disliked the very name of the “pirates,” as the Normans are called by Richer of Rheims down to the end of the century and beyond it. The earliest writer on the Norman side is Dudo, dean of St Quentin, who wrote late in the century, a rhetorical writer of the courtly school. But there is no doubt that the chief of the Scandinavian settlers was Rolf (in various spellings), known in Latin as Rollo and in French as Rou, a viking leader to whom many earlier exploits, real or mythical, are attributed. He received, as a grant from Charles the Simple, king of Carolingia or the Western kingdom, a tract of land of which Rouen was the centre and head, a tract certainly stretching as far as the Epte to the east, most likely stretching as far as the Dive to the west. It is an important part of the case that, though the land was cut off from the duchy of France, yet the grant was a grant from the king and not from the duke of the French, and that the king and not the duke received Rolf’s homage. The two princes were presently at war, Robert, duke of the French, having been elected as opposition-king in 922. Rolf seems to have stuck faithfully to his own lord, King Charles, alike against Robert and against Robert’s son Hugh, called the Great, and the king, Rudolf of Burgundy, whom Hugh set up. The Normans were thus at war with France almost from the moment of their settlement, and they were rewarded by a further acquisition of territory at the expense of the French duchy, namely, the Bessin or land of Bayeux. France was now nearly or wholly cut off from the sea. The Norman princes further claimed, by virtue of these early grants, a supremacy over both Britanny and Maine, which they were never able fully or lastingly to enforce.

Of the nature of the settlement made by the Northmen in the part of Gaul which they changed from France to Normandy we can judge only by the results. The new state for a while had no recognized territorial name. To the end of the century it is simply “Terra Northmannorum.” “Northmannia,” a name which with Einhard meant Denmark, which in Adam of Bremen commonly means Norway, becomes, in the shapes of “Nortmannia,” “Normannia,” “Normendie,” and the like, fully established in the next century as the name of the Norman land in Gaul. In English chronicles it appears as “Ricar-des land,” from the princes of that name; it is not “Normandi,” “Normandie,” “Normandig,” “Normandige,” till after the Norman Conquest. The chief again has no certain titles; at Rheims he was “princeps Northmannorum,” or, more heartily, “dux piratarum.” In the next century he becomes regularly “dux” or “comes Normannorum”; that is, he was “dux” as regards the Norman people, “comes” as regards his overlord the Western king. The people become definitely “Normanni,” “Normend.” It is not easy to say to what extent the Scandinavian settlers became mingled with the earlier occupiers of the land, or again how far those earlier inhabitants were of Frankish and how far of Celtic descent. It is plain that the land was parted out among Scandinavian landowners very much as in the Danish districts of England, and many places, just as in those districts, keep the name of the first Scandinavian lord. And it can hardly fail that, after the long harryings which went before the actual settlement, the population of the lands which lay open to the Northmen must have become scanty, and many parts are likely to have been quite forsaken. On the other hand, it is certain that before the end of the 10th century there was an oppressed peasantry in the land, and it is hardly likely that descendants of the original conquerors could have sunk so low in so short a time. The actual tillers of the soil were most likely to a great extent descendants of the earlier inhabitants; that is, they would belong to the same mixed nationality as the people of the duchy from which Normandy had been cut off, to that mixture of Celtic, Latin, and Teutonic elements which has formed the modern Frenchman. Yet in Normandy, as elsewhere, the tendency would come in which makes the actual cultivators of the soil sink rather than rise, and it is by no means unlikely that the later peasantry of Normandy were largely the descendants of the Scandinavian conquerors. Anyhow, a nobility gradually sprang up among the Normans themselves, consisting chiefly, it would seem, of those who could claim any kind of kindred or affinity, legitimate or illegitimate, with the ducal house. Some of the greatest Norman houses sprang from kinsfolk of wives or mistresses of the dukes who were themselves of very lowly degree. This is always likely to happen when a nobility is first forming. Early in the 11th century the order of “gentlemen” as a separate class seems to be forming as something new. By the time of the conquest of England the distinction seems to have been fully established.

The Norman, with the softened form of his name, is distinguished from the Northman by his adoption of the French language and the Christian religion. In the case of Rolf himself, as in the case of Guthrum, his baptism formed one of the terms of the agreement. The convert took the name of Robert, from the duke of the French, who acted as his godfather; but, as in other cases of baptized Danes, he was still always spoken of by his earlier name. Whether Rolf himself learned French we are not told; his language at the time of his homage is spoken of as English. This doubtless means any Low-Dutch or Scandinavian tongue, as opposed alike to High-Dutch and to French. Among his followers the twofold change took place with very different degrees of speed in different parts of the duchy. At Rouen and Evreux and in the eastern part generally, the first grant to Rolf, the change seems to have been very speedy. In some other parts circumstances made it much slower. Thus, at Bayeux it would seem that an earlier Saxon colony coalesced with the Scandinavians; at all events, a Teutonic tongue of some kind lived on there long after Rouen had come to speak no tongue but French. In the Cotentin, a still later acquisition, both the Northern speech and the Northern creed were kept up by fresh settlements from Scandinavia. The result was a wide distinction between the eastern and the western, the French and the Scandinavian, parts of the duchy, which led to important political consequences as late as the reign of the Conqueror.

The Cotentin, with its appendage of the Channel Islands, seems not to have been added to the land of the Northmen till after the accession of its second duke, William surnamed Longsword, about 927. Whether Rolf died, or abdicated, or was killed in battle, and the exact date of his son’s accession, do n<ff seem clearly fixed. The certain point is that William became the man of King Charles in 927, and that he refused all allegiance to the rival king, Rudolf of Burgundy, as long as Charles lived. His own reign lasted till 943. It is one of the most confused periods in the history of Gaul, and a good deal of the confusion is owing to the shifting policy or caprice of William himself. He changed sides more than once in the struggles between Lewis, the Carolingian king at Laon, and the more powerful Duke Hugh of Paris. At last, there can be little doubt, he was murdered by the practice of Count Arnulf of Flanders. In Normandy itself the history and effects of his reign are more marked. We see the struggle between the heathen or Danish party and the Christian, which may be also called the French, party. By this must be understood the party of the French speech and French civilization, not at all a party in the political interest of France. Its policy was to make Normandy a Christian and French-speaking state, an independent member of the Western kingdom, alongside of France and Flanders. The two parties are distinctly marked as geographical. The first years of William’s reign are marked by a revolt of the heathen party, who demand the cession of the lands west of the Risle. The Christian and French-speaking duke might reign in the region which had adopted his creed and tongue; the western Normandy should form a separate state, heathen and Scandinavian. Though all this rests on the not very high authority of Dudo, it bears the stamp of truth; it falls in with facts earlier and later; it is not the kind of story to grow up in the hands of a rhetorical panegyrist. William, successful over the rebels, appears as a Christian, not without fits of special devotion, and as anxious to take his place among the great princes of the Carolingian kingdom, notwithstanding the reproach of pirate origin that still cleaves to him. Yet he does not show himself the enemy of the other side. Himself speaking both tongues, he has his son Richard sent to Bayeux to gain a fuller mastery of the Northern speech, and he seems even to have admitted fresh settlement from the North in the western part of the duchy. The deep and clearly intentional darkness in which contemporary writers at Rheims leave the Norman history of this period makes any minute knowledge of this reign quite hopeless. But we may safely set it down as a time of struggle between the two elements in the land, a time in which things, on the whole, tended to the strengthening of the Christian, French, eastern element,—the influence of Rouen and not that of Bayeux.

It was the long reign of William’s son, Richard the Fearless, which finally settled the position of Normandy and which had no small influence on the position of France. We must always remember that Normandy and France were alike vassal states of the Western kingdom, the kingdom of the Carolingian king at Laon, a king who, in all but the moral influence of his kingly dignity, was a prince of far smaller power than either of his mighty vassals. Normandy, rent away from France, bound by direct homage to the king at Laon, had hitherto been on the whole an ally of the king who dwelled beyond the dominions of the duke. The fifty years of Richard’s reign changed all this. For the events of its early days we are not left wholly to Dudo; the writers at Rheims tell us enough to show that the division between the heathen and the Christian Normans was still strongly marked. The heathen party, strengthened by a new band of settlers from the North, got hold of the young Richard and persuaded or compelled him to fall back to his heathen worship. Richard was the son of William by a Breton mother, one who stood to his father in that doubtful relation which was called the Danish marriage, and who might be spoken of as wife or concubine at pleasure. At Rheims she bore the harsher name; yet it is a matter of avowed record that her son was received as his father’s successor by King Lewis. But the young duke —it is hard not to give him the title, though it is perhaps premature—was presently got hold of by the heathen party, who were just then strengthened by a fresh settlement from the North. The Christians sought help both at Laon and at Paris; king and duke entered the land, seemingly in concert, in two successive years (943, 944). The heathens were defeated; the king occupied Rouen and the whole Norman land, doubtless with the intention of keeping it. Nothing could better suit the king of Laon than to rule at Rouen as well, and to hem in the duke of Paris on both sides. The Norman writers tell a romantic tale of the escape of young Richard from captivity at Laon. What is more certain is that Normandy soon rose against Lewis, and that, by the help of a Danish leader, in whom the Normans see the famous king Harold Blaatand, the king was defeated and made a prisoner. The policy of Hugh of France now obtains possession of Lewis and a commendation of Richard to himself. Lewis was released on surrendering Laon; his kingdom was cut down to Compïègne. In 946, in alliance with the Eastern king...