But these were not our only foreign introduced names. Coeval with the arrival of these later Norman designations a remarkable peculiarity began to make itself apparent in the vast number of names that poured in from various and more distant parts of the Continent. That they came for purposes of trade, and to settle down into positions that the Saxons themselves should have occupied, is undoubted. The lethargy of the Saxon population at this period would be extraordinary, if it were not so easily to be accounted for. There was no heart in the nation. The Saxons had become a conquered people, and, although the spirit of Hereward the Wake was quenched, there had come that settled sullen humour which, finding no outlet for active enmity, fed in spirit upon itself, and increased with the pampering. To punish open disaffection is easy; to eradicate by the stern arm of power such a feeling as this is impossible. Time alone can do it, and that but slowly. More than a century after this we find Robin Hood the idol of popular sympathy; no national hero has ever eclipsed him, and yet, putting sentiment aside, he was naught but a robber, an outlawed knave. He was but a vent for the still lingering current of a people’s feelings. It was but the Saxon and Norman over again. We can easily imagine, then, if the spirit of the people was so lethargic as this, at how low an ebb would be the commercial enterprise of this period. No country was there whose resources for self-aggrandisement were greater than our own—none which had more disregarded them up to the reign of the third Edward. Till then she was the mere mine from which other countries might draw forth riches, the carcase for the eagles of many nations to feed upon. Saving the exportation of wool in its raw unmanufactured state, she did nothing for her national prosperity. The Dutch cured the fish they themselves caught on our coasts, and the looms of Flanders and Brabant manufactured the weft and warp we sent them into the cloth we wore. If our kings and barons were clad in scarlet and purple, little had England actively to do with that; her share in such superior tints was nought, save the production of the dye, for in conjunction with the Eastern indigo it was our woad the Netherlands used. That other nations were advancing, and that ours was not, is a statement, commercially speaking, I need not enlarge upon; it is a mere matter of history which no one disputes.