The true language of the people lingered on their lips, and it seemed to bestow a shadowy independence to a population in bondage. The remoter the locality, the more obdurate was the Saxon; and these indwellers were latterly distinguished as "Uplandish" by the inhabitants of cities. For about two centuries "the Uplandish" held no social connexion; separated not only by distance, but by their isolated dialects and peculiar customs, these natives of the soil shrunk into themselves, intermarrying and dying on the same spot; they were hardly aware that they were without a country. It was a great result of the Norman government in England that it associated our insular and retired dominion with that nobler theatre of human affairs, the Continent of Europe. In Normandy we trace the first footings of our national power; the English Sovereign, now a prince of France, ere long on the French soil vied in magnitude of territory with his paramount Lord, the Monarch of France. Such a permanent connexion could not fail to produce a conformity in manners; what was passing among our closest neighbours, rivals or associates, was reflected in the old Saxon land which had lost its nationality. FOOTNOTES: [1] Speed, 441. This was said to "the Conqueror," and this Abbot of St. Alban's paid dearly for the patriotism which had then become treason. [2] A circumstance which Milton has recorded. [3] Our great lawyers probably imagined that the honour of the country is implicated in the title usually accorded to William the Norman; SPELMAN, the great antiquary, and BLACKSTONE, the historian and the expounder of our laws, have absolutely explained away the assumed title of "the Conqueror" to a mere technical feudal term of "_Conquestor, or acquirer of any estate out of the common course of inheritance_." The first purchaser (that is, he who brought the estate into the family which at present owns it) was styled "the Conqueror," _and such is still the proper phrase in the law of Scotland_. RITSON is indignant at what he calls "a pitiful forensic quibble." But another great lawyer and lord chancellor, the sedate WHITELOCKE, positively asserts that "William only conquered Harold and his army; for he never was, nor _pretended to be_, the conqueror of England, although the _sycophant monks of the time_ gave him that title."--Whitelocke's "Hist. of England," 33.