URBANNA —
To say I was a bit miffed after learning about the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 and what happened to Anglo-Saxons for the next millennium is an understatement.
For years I nursed anger and on subsequent trips to England I refused to enter Norman churches. I even sniffed out French names suspicious such ancestors had enslaved my people. How dare they take our land, make us serfs and establish a social class system that suppressed my ancestors.
History is the story of human behavior. It must be learned and confronted but eventually we have to let it go. We are all descended from those in earlier times with far different moral codes than ours. It helps to keep that thought in mind.
If we expect sugar-coated history and that our ancestors were perfect, we are mistaken. Man is a savage animal. Pick up any history book and read what our ancestors have done to each other and still do to each other today.
History says it all — constant warfare, an unending battle for survival, where one killed or enslaved the other or was killed or enslaved. In earlier times there was no source of labor, but serfdom or slavery, as the concept of working for wages was not introduced until more recent times.
When “law of the jungle” prevailed anyone that arrived on the horizon who was “different” was an immediate threat to life and liberty. One stayed strong and armed or could expect the worst.
Anglo-Saxons had to defend their island which, throughout the centuries, was constantly invaded. Defeat meant disaster.
The invaders left their DNA. Vikings tore up and down the coast of England and Scotland for 1,000 years looting, raping and killing everywhere they landed. My DNA is 80 percent English and 20 percent Scandinavian. Thank you, Vikings! (Our DNA really relates our history!)
After Vikings came the Romans, who ruled my ancestors for centuries. It’s thought that the word “England” came about when a Roman emperor called his Anglo-Saxon slaves brought back to Rome “Angels” (Angel-land) because so many slaves were blonde and blue eyed.
Eventually the Roman Empire collapsed, but next came the Normans who arrived from France in 1066 with William, the Conqueror. They became rulers; natives became serfs that spent centuries working the land surrounding their masters’ castles. Even today many aristocratic families in England carry French names and I can still break out in goosebumps whenever I see a Norman castle.
The Wakefield name can be traced back as far as 1,000 A.D. from a troupe of dramatists that went from village to village putting on religious mysteries that taught moral lessons to villagers. With the Normans’ arrival they became serfs, worked the land surrounding the castle and were at the bottom of the iron clad Norman social class system.
Like other European immigrants, Anglo-Saxons poured into America to escape rigid class systems and seek freedom and opportunity. Yet they were as provincial as other ethnic groups; they stayed together and kept to their own ways.
When I was a child growing up in Vermilion, Ohio, there were three major sets of immigrants — English, German and Irish. Each had their own church and mainly married their own kind.
My upbringing was provincial. Father told me “don’t ever cross the channel, Mays!” We lived on the shores of Lake Erie so I thought he meant I was never to go to Canada but … what he meant was the English Channel!
European history is grim. They were constantly fighting each other. Immigrants that came here from Europe viewed other European immigrants suspiciously from previous invasions and wars. They distrusted each other, even after arriving in America.
Then, as most Protestants and Catholics were taught years ago, inter-marriage was discouraged. One day I asked Father why I couldn’t marry a Catholic. “Traitors to the king!” Father answered as a joke and we both exploded in laughter. It was so ridiculous.
Yet, read English history: Catholics supported the Pope and not the king when Henry VIII broke with Rome more than 500 years ago. It split England into two deadly factions and memory is long. My conversation with Father was a first inkling that our history not only limits our thinking and opportunities in life but also enslaves us.
In spite of Anglo-Saxons’ long suffering in England, our ancestors were as ruthless as Normans when it came to taking land in America. They and all ethnic groups, including even some unscrupulous African tribal chiefs, were involved in barbaric slave trade during 16th-18th centuries. Slavery was once acceptable to world governments, similar to how many people today, including our own government, view abortion as acceptable today.
Yes, history, human behavior, is painful. Can we ever rise above our history?
(The end of an era series continues next week.)
© 2021.
