(21) The Angevin family are commonly known as the Plantagenets; but that name was never used as a surname till the fifteenth century. The name is sometimes convenient, but it is not a really correct description, like Tudor and Stewart, both of which were real surnames, borne by the two families before they came to the Crown. In the almanacks the Angevins are called “The Saxon line restored,” a name which gives a false idea, though there can be no doubt that Henry the Second was fully aware of the advantages to be drawn from his remote female descent from the Old-English Kings. The point to be borne in mind is that the accession of Henry is the beginning of a distinct dynasty which could not be called either Norman or English in any but the most indirect way. (22) I do not remember anything in any of the writers of Henry the Second’s time to justify the popular notions about “Normans and Saxons” as two distinct and hostile bodies. Nor do we as yet hear many complaints of favour being shown to absolute foreigners in preference to either, though it is certain that many high preferments, especially in the Church, were held by men who were not English in either sense. The peculiar position of Henry the Second was something like that of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, that of a prince ruling over a great number of distinct states without being nationally identified with any of them. Henry ruled over England, Normandy, and Aquitaine, but he was neither English, Norman, nor Gascon. (23) That is the greater, the continental, part of the Duchy. The insular part of Normandy, the Channel Islands, was not lost, and it still remains attached to the English Crown, not as part of the United Kingdom, but as a separate dependency. See Norman Conquest, i. 187. (24) See Norman Conquest, i. 310, 367; and on the appointment of Bishops and Abbots, i. 503, ii. 66, 571. (25) See the Ordinance in Norman Conquest, iv. 392. Stubbs, Select Charters, 81. (26) See Norman Conquest, iii. 317.