But not at his bidding could the military chief for ever silence the mother-tongue. Enough for "this stern man" to guard the land in peace, while every single hyde of land in England was known to him, and "put at its worth in HIS BOOK," as records the Saxon chronicler. The language of a people is not to be conquered as the people themselves. The "birth-tongue" may be imprisoned or banished, but it cannot die--the people think in it; the images of their thoughts, their traditional phrases, the carol over the mead-cup, and their customs far diffused, survived even the iron tongue of the curfew. The Saxons themselves, who had chased the native Britons from their land, still found that they could not suppress the language of the fugitive people. The conquerors gave their Anglo-Saxon denominations to the towns and villages they built; but the hills, the forests, and the rivers retain their old Celtic names.[7] Nature and nationality will outlast the transient policy of a new dynasty. The novel idiom became the language of those only with whom the court-language, whatever it be, will ever prevail--the men who by their contiguity to the great affect to participate in their influence. In that magic circle of hopes and fears where royalty is the sole magician of the fortunes of men, the Conqueror perpetuated his power by perpetuating his language. Ignorance of the French tongue was deemed a sufficient pretext for banishing an English bishop pertinacious in his nationality, who had for a while been admitted to the royal councils, but whose presence was no longer necessary to the dominant party.