Читать книгу Magna Carta: A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John. With an Historical Introduction онлайн

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It is notable that each of the three influences, destined ultimately to aid most materially in this process of unification, threatened at one time to have a contrary effect. Thus the rivalries of the smaller kingdoms tended at first towards a complete disruption, before Wessex succeeded in asserting an undisputed supremacy; the Christianizing of England partly by Celtic missionaries from the north and partly by emissaries from Rome threatened to split the country into two, until their mutual rivalries were stilled after the Synod of Whitby in 664; and one effect of the incursion of the Danes was to create an absolute barrier between the lands that lay on either side of Watling Street, before the whole country succumbed to the unifying pressure of Cnut and his sons.

The stern discipline of foreign conquest was required to make national unity possible; and, with the restoration of the old Wessex dynasty in the person of Edward Confessor, the forces of disintegration again made headway. England threatened once more to fall to pieces, but at the critical and appointed time the iron rule of the Normans came to complete what the Danes had begun half a century earlier. As the weakness of the Anglo-Saxon kings and the disruption of the country had gone hand in hand, so the process which, after the Conquest, made England one, was identical with the process which established the throne of the new dynasty on a strong, enduring basis. The complete unification of England was the result of the Norman despotism.