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.

At 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.

Whilst Edward tolerated for his own purposes a very limited use of the Anglo-Saxon, he continued, as well as his court, to speak the French language. His mother was a princess of France, in whose name he asserted his right to the crown of St. Louis; the field of battle presents no difference between the combatants: in both armies, brothers are opposed to brothers, fathers to their children; Créci, Poitiers, Agincourt, exhibit no other picture than that of the disasters of a wide spread civil war. French was spoken by Philippa of Hainault, the consort of Edward III; she had Froissart for her secretary, and the curate of Lestines recorded in charming French the loves of Edward and Alice of Salisbury.

The guests of the vœu du héron converse in French; the too famous Robert of Artois is the hero of the feast.

By pronouncing the word voire-yes-Edward had taken to Philip of Valois the French oath which he afterwards violated. "Sire, you became a man of the King of France, my master, for Guienne and its dependencies, which you acknowledge yourself to hold of him as a peer of France, agreeably to the form of treaties concluded between his predecessors and yours, and to what you and your ancestors have done to

his predecessors, Kings of France, in respect of the same duchy."

After the battle of Créci had been fought, the slain were counted; the narrative comes to us from an Englishman, Michael de Northburgh (Avesburg hist.) "Fusrent mortz le Roi de Beaume (Bohême,) le Ducz de Loreigne, le Counte d'Alescun (d'Alençon) le Counte de Flandres, le Counte de Bloys, le Counte de Harcourt et ses deux filtz; et Philippe de Valois et le Markis qu'est appelé le Elitz (Elu) du Romayns eschappèrent navfrés, à ceo qe homme (on) dist. La summe de bones gentz d'armes qui fusrent mortz en le chaumpe à ceste jour, sans comunes et pédailles (gens de pied) amonte à mille DXLII acomptés."

"The King of Bohemia, the Duke of Lorraine, the Count of Alençon, the Count of Flanders, the Count of Blois, the Count of Harcourt and his two sons, were amongst the dead ; Philip of Valois and the Marquis who is called the Elect of the Romans escaped, it is said, with heavy hearts. The number of able men at arms who perished in the field of battle this day, independently of common people and foot-soldiers, amounts to 1542 duly counted."

Whilst the English were thusenumerating in

French, the slain of the French army, it must have occurred to their minds that they had not always been conquerors, and that they preserved in their language the very proof of their subjection and of the fickleness of fortune.

In the acts of Rymer, the originals, from 1101 to about 1460, are almost exclusively in Latin and French. The numerous statutes of the reigns of Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, and Edward IV were drawn up, transcribed upon the rolls, and promulgated in French. We must descend to a period as recent as the year 1425 to discover the first English act of the House of Commons. Nevertheless, when Henry V besieged Rouen in 1418, the ambassadors whom he affected an eagerness to send to the conferences of the Pont-de-l'Arche, declined the mission under the pretext of their not knowing the language of the country; but this fact is of no value; Henry was averse to peace. After his death, the soldiers of his army are found speakfng the same language as the Maid of Orleans, and giving evidence for the prosecution, on the trial of that heroic woman.

At last, the Parliament convoked at Westminster the 20th of January 1483, under Richard III, drew up the bills in English, and its