the jongleurs constantly extolled the beauty of the French; they lauded

adding:

Mainte belle dame courtoise
Bien parlant en langue françoise;

Il est sages, biaux et courtois
Et gentiel home de par francois
Miex valt sa parole françoise
Que de Glocestre la ricoise.

Seïez de bouere et cortois

Et sachez bien parler françois.

The françois always brought in the rhyme of courtois, to the manifest displeasure of the AngloSaxons.

Edward 1. paid the most respectful attention to the reading of a Latin bull of Boniface VIII., and ordered it to be translated into French, because he had not understood its meaning.

Peter de Blois informs us that, in the beginning of the twelfth century, Gillibert was ignorant of English; being well versed, however, in Latin and French, he preached to the people on Sundays and holydays. Wadington, a poet and historian of the thirteenth century, intimates that he writes his works in French, and not in English, in order that he may be the better understood by high and low, a proof that the

foreign idiom was on the point of stifling the ancient idiom of the land.

There exists in the Harleian library a French and epistolary grammar for all professions, another in French verse, and a Roman-Latin glossary.

French works were occasionally translated into English; this, in the language of the poets, was done through commiseration for the lewed, the low and ignorant class.

For lewed men I undyrtoke

In Englyshe tonge to make this boke.

The poor Scaldes, beaten by the troubadours of the victors, and living retired amongst the vanquished, laboured, by means of the multitude, to recover the ascendency. They celebrated plebeian adventures, and in a series of pictures brought Piers Ploughman on the stage. Such was the line of demarcation between rival muses and rival people. The national muse taunted the gentleman with speaking only the French language:

French use this gentleman,
And never English can.

A proverb said: "Jack needs nought but a knowledge of French to set up for a gentleman."

These divisions were of remote date. The Anglo-Saxon Earl Guallève (the renowned Waltheof) had been beheaded, during the Conqueror's reign, for having joined in the conspiracy of Roger Earl of Hereford and Ralph Earl of Norfolk. Guallève, Earl of Northampton, was the son of Siward Duke of Northumbria. His body was removed by Abbot Ulfketel to Croyland. Having been taken up a few years afterwards, it was found entire, with the head united to the trunk; a slight streak alone indicated where the steel had severed the neck; by this collar of martyrdom, the Anglo-Saxons acknowledged Guallève for a saint. The Normans ridiculed the miracle. Audin, a monk of that nation, openly declared that the son of Siward had been no better than a traitor, and had justly forfeited his life. Audin suddenly died of a bowel complaint.

Abbot Goisfred, successor of Ingulf, had a vision. He beheld one night near the Earl's tomb Bartholomew the Apostle, and Guthlac the Anchorite, clothed in white garments. Bartholomew, holding Guallève's head, which had been restored to its place, said: "He was not beheaded." Guthlac, standing at Guallève's feet, replied, "He was once an Earl." Apostle rejoined, He is now a King." The

The

Anglo-Saxon population flocked in pilgrimage to the tomb of their fellow countryman. This story exhibits in a striking manner the separation and antipathy of the two nations. (Orderic Vital.)

In fact, the use of the French language is according to Milton, of a much more remote antiquity, for he fixes the date of it in the reign of Edward the Confessor.

Then," says he, began the English to lay, aside their own ancient customs and in many things to imitate French manners, the great peers to speak French in their houses, in French to write their bills and letters, as a great piece of gentility ashamed of their own: a presage of their subjection shortly to that people, whose fashions and language they affected so slavishly." (Hist. of England. Book VI.)

RETURN, BY LAW, TO THE NATIONAL LANGUAGE.

Ar the very moment when the French language was obtaining the ascendency, owing to the victories of Edward III, to the permanency of English armies on the French soil, to the occupation of cities wrested from our country, this monarch, standing in need of the English pédaille and ribaudaille, granted the use of the insular idiom in civil pleadings, nevertheless, the judgments resulting from these pleadings were always delivered in the French idiom. The very act of Parliament of 1362, which directs that the English idiom shall thenceforward be in use, is drawn up in French. It required nothing short of the scourges of heaven to combine with the laws in extinguishing the language of the conquerors; for it is remarked that on occasion of the great plague of 1349 the French idiom first began to decline.