The prominence which I have given to the preliminary history contained in this volume is due to a deep and growing conviction that the history of the Norman Conquest, and indeed all later English history also, is constantly misunderstood through a fatal habit of beginning the study of English history with the Norman Conquest itself. A confused and unhappy nomenclature hinders many people from realizing that Englishmen before 1066 were the same people as Englishmen after 1066. They thus fail to perceive that the Norman Conquest, instead of wiping out the race, the laws, or the language which existed before it, did but communicate to us a certain foreign infusion in all three branches, which was speedily absorbed and assimilated into the preexisting mass. We cannot understand the Norman Conquest of England without knowing something of the history both of Englishmen and of Normans before they met in arms on the hills of Sussex. As regards the Normans, the conquest of England was but the most brilliant and the most permanent of a series of brilliant conquests, from the occupation of Rouen to the occupation of Naples. As regards England, the Conquest was the grand and final result of causes which had been at work at least ever since the death of Eadgar. The Danish invasions, and the Norman tendencies of Eadward, each, in different ways, both suggested the enterprise of William and made that enterprise easier to be effected. I therefore look on the earlier history of Normandy, and still more on the English history from the accession of Æthelred to the death of Harthacnut, as so closely connected with my subject as to need a treatment in considerable detail. With the reign of Eadward the period of the Conquest itself begins. And I may add that I have done my best to throw some life into a period of our history which is full alike of political instruction and of living personal interest. That period is commonly presented to ordinary readers in the guise either of fantastic legends or else of summaries of the most repulsive dryness. I have striven to show what was the real political state of England in the tenth and eleventh centuries. I have striven also to clothe with flesh and blood the dry bones of men like Brihtnoth and Ulfcytel and Eadmund and our illustrious Danish conqueror himself.