Task of the Norman kings.I don’t think you want to know at what date this or that baron rebelled against Willlam or Henry, or at what date William or Henry sent an army against the King of France or the Welsh; I would rather that you would understand how these Kings were pursuing, on the whole, two main tasks. First they were trying to make England and Wales one compact kingdom, and secondly they were obliged, because they were Dukes of Normandy, to quarrel with the Kings of France. It was they, then, who founded our 800-year-long hostility to the gallant Frenchmen, which is now, happily, at an end.
Beginnings of the Conquest of Wales,The first of these tasks was mainly left to the great Norman barons, the Earls of Chester, Shrewsbury and Gloucester, who built castles on the Welsh border and sent continual expeditions far into Wales. William II once marched himself to the foot of Snowdon, and gave the Welsh thieves a very severe lesson against stealing English cattle and murdering English settlers. Henry I started a regular colony of Englishmen in Pembrokeshire. Welsh ‘princes’ continued to exist till the end of the thirteenth century, but only once troubled England seriously after Henry I’s time.
and of Cumberland;In the north-west, William II completely conquered Westmoreland, Lancashire and Cumberland, made them English ground for ever, and rebuilt the old Roman fortress of Carlisle. attitude of the Norman King to Scotland.On the Scottish border William I built a great fortress at Newcastle-on-Tyne; but this did not stop King Malcolm's raids, for many Saxons, who had lost their lands in 1066, had fled to Scotland, and helped in these raids. But William II and Henry I managed their Scottish neighbours so cleverly, that from 1095 to 1138 there were no more Scottish raids at