language he had learned in his exile. His attachment to a foreign tongue, for which many excuses could be found, was aped by his courtiers, who took a miserable pride in adopting a foreign idiom instead of endeavoring to restore the energy of their own. Some imitated Norman manners and language to please the king and to flatter his followers of Norman blood; others thought thus to make themselves acceptable, when asking favor or office, and still others studied it from motives of ambition. Thus Ingulphus of Croydon tells us no monkish fable, when he speaks of his own knowledge of French, and cites French manners as the most polite accomplishment of his age. This influence assumed, of course, a different aspect after the conquest of England. What, before, inclination and fashion had commended to the courtier and the ambitious, became now a matter of necessity and personal interest, and the illiterate, subjugated nation was apparently so ready to forget the vernacular, that already in 1091 few but the oldest men could still read Anglo-Saxon letters! Vanity was, now also, as powerful a motive as necessity, and Higden tells us in his Polychronicon, that not only "upplandissche men will liken himself to gentlemen and fondeth with great besynesse to speak Frenche for to be tolde of," but the the very peasants, to appear more respectable, interlarded their speech with French morsels (“ rurales homines, ut per hoc respectabiliores videantur, francigenari satagunt omni nisu"). Even patriots considered a knowledge of the language of the Conqueror indispensable, if they would hope to be of any use to their unfortunate race. The illustrious and ill-fated Archbishop of Canterbury, who rose to be the first English Primate of England, Thomas à Becket, could boast of knowing French

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as well as the Conqueror himself; he had learned it from hatred and for the purpose of overthrowing the enemy of his country.

Thus the Anglo-Saxon had almost disappeared as the language of authority or social intercourse; nor did it find protection or encouragement in Literature; and from the sad morning when Tailefer sung his ballad of Roland at the head of the Norman army at Hastings, to the days of Chaucer, no English romance was heard in England. French was sung as well as spoken. We hear of the unfortunate Chevalier Luc de Barre, whom Henry I. "le Beauclerc," deprived of his eyes for some "serventois or satirical songs which seem to have been as numerous as popular in the army. Anglo-Saxons themselves preferred writing in the language of those who were best able and most likely to appreciate their talents and to reward their efforts. Thus Robert Grossetête, the famous Bishop of Lincoln under Henry III., though a native of Suffolk, wrote his Chasteau d'Amour and Manuel des Péchés in French, and even Gower, the "moral" Gower, as Chaucer calls him, whose curious tomb may still be seen in Southwark, began his career as a French poet, excusing himself for his bad French thus:

Old, venerable works had to assume a new garb; Anglo-Saxon poems forgot their majestic step and impressive alliteration to appear in Norman rhymes. The great "lady trouvère," Marie.

de France, translated into Anglo-Norman the rich treasures of Latin, Welsh, Saxon, and Armorican poetry. The oral legends of Wales and Brittany, the songs of King Arthur and his Round Table, and of the Holy Graal, she

"Translata puis en Englies

Et j'eo l'ai rimé en Franceis,"

as we read in her own fair writing in the still extant MS. of her valuable and copious works.

Thus the Norman language seemed to be as victorious in England as Norman armies had been, and was to the end of the fourteenth century the official language of government, spoken by king, bishops, judges, nobles, and "gentils hommes." Power, rank, wealth, influence, and fashion, all seemed to conspire to suppress and banish the tongue of the conquered race. Provision was made to prevent even future generations from using any but French words. The letters of sovereigns, which, like those of private citizens, had heretofore been almost exclusively written in Latin, appear since Edward I. suddenly, in French; and Rymer has a dispatch of Prince Henry, afterwards Henry V., to his father in French. The minutes of the Corporation of London, recorded in the town clerk's office, were in the same language, and priors and monks were compelled to address their bishops and to keep their journals in the language of the Norman. The statutes of Oriel College, of Oxford, of the year 1328, compel the students to converse in Latin or French: "Si qua inter se proferant colloquio Latino vel saltem Gallico proferantur," and the same injunction is found in the statutes of Exeter College, seven years later: "Romano

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aut Gallico saltem utantur," whilst even in grammar schools younger boys were ordered to construe their Latin into French. The indignant Trevisa informs us that "children in schole azenes (against) the usage and manir of alle naciouns, beeth compelled for to leve hire owne langage and for to constrewe hire lessons and her thingis in Frenche."

CHAPTER XXII.

THE ANGLO-SAXON AND THE PEOPLE.

The Saxons in the majority-Ignorance of Normans-Germanic elements of Norman French-The Normans cut off from Normandy-Danish aid.

CONQUESTS, however, cannot exterminate a language, nor drive it from its native soil. The Normans, with all their power and strength, lords of the land, masters of the people, and every advantage on their side, could not destroy a highly cultivated ancient and national tongue, like the Saxon. It rose against them and conquered them in its turn. As circumstances and principles are generally both the same in all cases of conquest, the fate of the Anglo-Saxon by the side of the Norman French may serve as an illustration of the effects of such influences on the formation of a language.

The fondness of Anglo-Saxon rulers for the tongue of their neighbors had, at an early period, called forth a certain opposition, which, though then little noticed, nevertheless

strengthened, no doubt, the ties that bound the people to their mother tongue. Soon after the time when a strong Norman party prevailed at the English court, and Edward III. cherished and encouraged French manners and language, the great body of Anglo-Saxon nobles assembled in solemn council, decreed the banishment of all foreigners, including Normans, and swore not to adopt the speech of those whom they generally and justly despised. Nor could their feelings have changed much when they subsequently raised a powerful Saxon noble to the throne, for the avowed purpose of resisting Norman aggression, and in Camden's Remains we find the important passage: "Herein is a notable argument of our ancestors, steadfastness in esteeming and retaining their own tongue. For, as before the Conquest, they disliked nothing more in King Edward the Confessor than that he was Frenchified, and accounted the desire of a foreign language then to be a foretoken of the bringing in of foreign powers, which indeed happened."

The Normans could, as conquerors, seat their Norman French upon the throne, and the judge's bench, at the dais of the noble, and in the refectory of the monk, but they found the door of manor and cottage jealously guarded. Their numbers, moreover, were too small to allow them to spread all over the kingdom. Their soldiers were stationed in a few garrisons and citadels to secure the towns and overawe the country, where their great skill in fortification, of which the Saxons knew nothing, was an ample compensation for their small numbers. The few Norman soldiers and their families, thus immured in castles, and too haughty to associate with the despised Saxons,