Here, as we have seen in Hampshire, at Calshot, on the borders of the Forest, Cerdic landed. Here he defeated the Britons, and established the kingdom of the West-Saxons. Here the West-Saxon Alfred rallied his countrymen and crowned defeat with victory. Here, too, stood the capital of Wessex, Winchester, in whose cathedral lie the old West-Saxon kings. Here, then, if anywhere, we should expect to find West-Saxon characteristics and a West-Saxon population. As is well known, after the battle of Hastings, the West-Saxons, with one or two exceptions, succumbed willingly enough to the Conqueror, who lived amongst them; whilst the Northmen across the Humber bid him defiance. Every one must to this day notice the extreme deference, almost amounting to a painful obsequiousness, of the lower classes in the southern, compared with their independent manner in the northern, parts of England. We find, too, mingled, however, with characteristics from other sources, the West-Saxon element not only in the appearance of the long-limbed Forest peasantry, with their narrow head and shoulders, and loose, shambling gait, but also in their slowness of perception. They betray, too, to this hour that worst Teutonic trait of fatalism, observable in all their epitaphs, and in their daily expression, “It was not to be,” applied to anything which does not take place. Notwithstanding, too, their apparent servility, an amount of cunningness and craft peeps out, which in a different age compelled the Conqueror to make special laws against assassination.[200] Much must be set against these drawbacks. Enslaved to an extent which no modern historian has dared to reveal, and can only be fully conceived by the dreadful story of _The Chronicle_,—treated as beasts rather than even slaves,—the West-Saxons showed, under the Normans, a spirit of obedience and an adaptability to changed circumstances which are above praise. Let us give the West-Saxon labourer credit for it both then and to this day, that though the most ill-paid and ill-fed in England, he bears his heavy yoke of poverty without a murmur.