The Conquest

Permit me to point out the erroneous historical idea which obtains in the use of this phrase. Acquisition out of the common course of inheritance is by our legists called *perquisitio*, by the feudists *conquisitio*, and the first purchaser (he who brought the estate into the current family) the *conquereur*. The charters and chronicles of the age thus rightly style William the Norman *conquisitor*, and his accession *conquæstus*; but now, from disuse of the foedal sense, with the notion of the forcible method of acquisition, we annex the idea of victory to conquisition,—a title to which Willi…