Normandy has also its place in the history of European institutions, for the Normans were organizers as well as conquerors, and their political creations were the most efficient states of their time. Masterful, yet legally minded and businesslike, with a sense for detail and routine, the Norman princes had a sure instinct for state-building, at home and abroad. The Norman duchy was a compact and powerful state before its duke crossed the Channel, and the central government which the Normans created in England showed the same characteristics on a larger scale. The Anglo-Norman empire of the twelfth century was the marvel of its day, while the history of the Norman kingdom of Sicily showed that the Norman genius for assimilation and political organization was not confined to the dukes of Rouen. Highly significant during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Norman institutions remained of permanent importance, affecting the central administration of France in ways which are still obscure, and exerting a decisive influence upon the law and government of England. Normandy was the connecting link between the Frankish law of the Continent and the English common law, and thus claims a share in the jurisprudence of the wide-flung lands to which the common law has spread. The institution of trial by jury, for example, is of Norman origin, or rather of Frankish origin and Norman development. By virtue, then, of its large part in the events of its time, by virtue of the decisive character of the events in which the Normans took part, and by virtue of the permanent influence of its institutions, the Normandy of the dukes can claim an important position in the general history of the world. In seeking to describe the place of the Normans in European history we shall accordingly pass over those periods, the earlier and the later, which are primarily of local interest, and concentrate ourselves upon the heroic age of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries. We shall begin with the coming of the Northmen and the creation of the Norman state. The third lecture will consider the Norman conquest of England; the fourth, the Norman empire to which this gave rise. We shall then trace the events which led to the separation of Normandy from England and its ultimate union in 1204 with the French monarchy under Philip Augustus, concluding our survey of the Normans of the north by a sketch of Norman life and culture in this period. The two concluding lectures will trace the establishment of the Norman kingdom of southern Italy and Sicily, and examine the brilliant composite civilization of the southern Normans from the reign of the great King Roger to the accession of his still more famous grandson, the Emperor Frederick II. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE