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66 The House of Israel

people, steeped in civilization, literature and law which the appeared some years ago in The Voice of the Nether-
Normans did not possess. Prof. Trevelyn called the Con- lands, in which H. Posthumus, a Dutch writer, pointed
queror a high-souled villain. out that “few people in either Britain or the Nether-
lands realize the age and intimacy of Anglo-Dutch re-
The Significance of the Conquest lations.” During the last 2,000 years by social, political
and economic movements the influence of the Nether-
Even Charles Kingsley who described the Con- lands on British development has been considerable.
quest as a crime (aided as he said by the Church of Rome)
was fain to add that it brought England into the current of Many British and Dutch people have a com-
European life. Most historians look on it as the consolida- mon ancestry from which they have inherited similar
tion of England. Perhaps the best way to view it is as the qualities. Their passionate love of liberty has made
in-gathering of the last significant racial element of the them the pioneers of modern democracy and religious
Servant People. tolerance. “Nations of shopkeepers” both, their genius
for commerce built up the strength which finally broke
However, there is usually more than one way in the power of Louis XIV and Napoleon and stimulated
which an event can occur. For 50 years, from Ethelred’s the love of enterprise which has made them explorers
exile in Normandy to 1066, England and Normandy were and colonists in the world.
drawn closer together. Every plan to prevent the Conquest
failed. The last King of the old Wessex line, the Confessor, Before Caesar’s conquest of Britain, there
deliberately ruined his country, by being too holy to beget were Low Dutch people who had immigrated into Brit-
a son. On his deathbed he acknowledged his sin. ain from Flanders, because of floods; the Frisians con-
ducted most of Britain’s import and export trade before
It is estimated that there were 1 million to 1 ½ million peo- the invasions of the Anglo-Saxons in the fifth and sixth
ple in England in 1066; by 1086 one-third of these had per- centuries. In the eighth century, England was a centre
ished or been exiled. Many had been blinded or had their of learning. Some missionaries, like Willibrod and
hands cut off. Their places were taken by Normans, Bret- Boniface, worked among the Frisians. Then in the
ons and all sorts of blackguards west of the Alps who had ninth and tenth centuries, the learned men of England
been attracted by the prospect of loot -- blessed by the -- Alcuin among them -- were driven by the attacks of
Pope as a crusade (the English Church had been slow in the Danes to the Continent. In the latter half of the tenth
paying Peter’s Pence). century, the foreign trade of London laid the founda-
tion of its future commercial greatness. Because of its
The Norman villains fell out amongst them- relations with the merchants of the Dutch towns of Tiel
selves, and many of them were kicked out by their own and Dordrecht -- the greatest commercial centres of
kings. Henry I with an army of English conquered Nor- that time -- England’s prosperity increased.
mandy. The mass of Israel was now gathered into the Ap-
pointed Place. Following the Norman Conquest, there came
many Flemish weavers who had a large share in the de-
-- Leslie G. Pine velopment of England. Dutch immigrants started
sheep-farming, which was to contribute so much to
Our Kinsfolk in the Netherlands -- England’s early greatness. The Flemish type of indus-
Always Closely Associated trial organisation inspired the formation of the English
guilds of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the
twelfth century, Dutch merchants had their own pri-
THE NETHERLANDS must, undoubtedly, con-
vate wharves in London and were members of the
tain a significant portion of the Israelite remnant still out-
Guildhall. At the time of the Conquest, many An-
side the Company of Nations. Support for this contention

The Berean Voice September-October 2002