The Norman invaders swept like a whirlwind over old institutions, yet some of the strongest stood firm. They were, after all, of the same Church, and Church and Cloister preserved the records of Saxon liberties, and the customs of Saxon times. The clerical and lay powers of many Abbesses were handed down unimpaired to their successors in Norman times. The conquest was not one of extermination but of superposition. The great mass of the _people_ remained Saxon in heart. The Normans were, too, of a kindred race, though they had come from a long sojourn in a land where language, thought, and custom had become Latinised, a land that already held the principles of the Salic Law. William promised to respect the laws of the country, but there is no appeal against a conqueror’s will, or a soldier’s sword. The lands they wrested from the Saxons, the Normans held of the King by Feudal Tenure or by Military Service. Their laws, customs, and language dominated the Saxons, as did their swords. But only for a time. The struggles with France formed, through a common antagonism, a united nation of the varying races in the island. To complete the union, the nation went back to the language of the Saxons, and, when opportunity for freedom called, went back to their old laws as a basis of the new. That women suffered more than men did from the Norman invasion might only have been expected. But that they did not do so nearly to the extent that it is commonly supposed, can be proved by reference to competent authorities, by whom the limitations of their privileges are shown to proceed on definite and comprehensible lines. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER II. THE MODERN BASES OF PRIVILEGE. “All rights arise out of justice.... Justice is a constant and perpetual will to award to each his right.... Jurisprudence is the knowledge of divine and human things, the science of what is just and unjust.”—BRACTON. DE LEGIBUS ANGLIÆ.“Of acquiring the dominion of things.”—_Temp. Hen. III._