A common national sympathy held the country roughly together, but a real national union had yet to come.

It came with foreign rule.

The rule of the Danish kings broke local jealousies as they had never been broken before, and bequeathed a new England to Godwine and the Confessor.

But Cnut was more Englishman than Northman, and his system of government was an English system.

The true foreign yoke was only felt when England saw its conqueror in William the Norman.
For nearly a century and a half, from the hour when William turned triumphant from the fens of Ely to the hour when John fled defeated from Norman shores, our story is one of foreign masters.