Though they had long since cast off the rude habits and uncouth manners of adventurers and conquerors, and when they invaded England were, perhaps, as intelligent and refined as any similar number of European people, and a great deal more so than those they conquered in England, they had never assumed the form, enacted laws, or established rules and regulations as an aristocracy or governing class. From this time forth, however, the Norman aristocracy ruled England with an iron hand, and though the wars of the Roses, and the still more fatal conflict with the Puritans or middle class, exterminated or drove out the remains of the Norman blood, and there is little, if any, in England at this time, the country is still governed by the traditions, the habits, in short, the system established by the old Norman aristocracy. Most of the great families became extinct, while the younger sons and others of broken fortunes emigrated to Virginia, and with the establishment of the commonwealth, very many of the Norman ancestry abandoned England. So many and so strong were the remnants of the old Norman families in Virginia, that they refused to recognize the commonwealth, and actually set at defiance the formidable power and iron will of Cromwell. But these remains of the old Norman aristocracy—that aristocracy which for several centuries governed England—that have left their impress, their habits, their laws of primogeniture, their feudalistic customs, so deeply engraven on the English mind, that the aristocracy of the day, though entirely modern, and with scarcely any family connection with it, are able to govern the masses, through these habitudes, as absolutely as the Normans once did by the sword and the strong hand of arbitrary power, these descendants of the old Norman race in Virginia have changed completely about, and though their ancestors were the main supporters of kingly despotism, they are the originators and champions of democracy in America.