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Unit 1. Socio-historical introduction to the Middle
English period: The Norman Conquest and its influence
on language development.
Introduction
The Normanswere the people who gave their name to Normandy, a
region in northern France. They were descended from Viking
conquerors of the territory and the native population of mostly
Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock. Their identity emerged initially in
the first half of the 10th century, and gradually evolved over
succeeding centuries. The name "Normans" derives from Nortmanni
(Northmen), after the Vikings who founded Normandy.
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They quickly adopted the Romance language of the land they settled
off, their dialect becoming known as Norman, an important literary
language. The Duchy of Normandy, which they formed by treaty with
the French crown, was one of the great large fiefs of medieval France.
The Normans are famed both for their culture, such as their unique
Romanesque architecture, and their musical traditions, as well as for
their military accomplishments and innovations. Norman adventurers
established a kingdom in Sicily and southern Italy by conquest, and aNorman expedition on behalf of their duke led to the Norman
Conquest of England. Norman influence spread from these new
centres to the Crusader States in the Near East, to Scotland and Wales
in Great Britain, and to Ireland.
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The Conquest of England
The Norman conquest of Englandbegan on 28 September 1066 with
the invasion of England by William, Duke of Normandy, who became
known as William the Conqueror after his victory at the Battle of
Hastings on 14 October 1066, defeating the then king Harold II of
England. Harold's army was badly depleted in the English victory at
the Battle of Stamford Bridge in Northern England on 25 September
1066 over the army of King Harald III of Norway. By early 1071,William had secured control of most of England, although rebellions
and resistance continued to approximately 1088.
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The Norman conquest was a pivotal event in English history. It largely
removed the native ruling class, replacing it with a foreign, French-
speaking monarchy, aristocracy, and clerical hierarchy. This, in turn,brought about a transformation of the English language and the
culture of England in a new era often referred to as Norman England
(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Conquest_of_England)
By bringing England under the control of rulers originating in France,
the Norman conquest linked the country more closely with continental
Europe, lessened Scandinavian influence, and also set the stage for a
rivalry with France that would continue intermittently for many
centuries. It also had important consequences for the rest of the British
Isles, paving the way for further Norman conquests in Wales and
Ireland, and the extensive penetration of the aristocracy of Scotland byNorman and other French-speaking families, with the accompanying
spread of continental institutions and cultural influences.
Precedents to the Conquest
In 1002 King thelred II of England married Emma, the sister of
Richard II, Duke of Normandy. Their son Edward the Confessor, whospent many years in exile in Normandy, succeeded to the English
throne in 1042. This led to the establishment of a powerful Norman
interest in English politics, as Edward drew heavily on his former hosts
for support, bringing in Norman courtiers, soldiers, and clerics and
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appointing them to positions of power, particularly in the Church.
Childless and embroiled in conflict with the formidable Godwin, Earl
of Wessex and his sons, Edward may also have encouraged Duke
William of Normandy's ambitions for the English throne.
When King Edward died at the beginning of 1066, the lack of a clear
heir led to a disputed succession in which several contenders laid
claim to the throne of England. Edward's immediate successor was the
Earl of Wessex, Harold Godwinson (King Harold II), the richest and
most powerful of the English aristocracy, who was elected king by the
Witenagemot of England and crowned by Archbishop Ealdred ofYork. However, he was at once challenged by two powerful
neighbouring rulers. Duke William claimed that he had been promised
the throne by King Edward and that Harold had sworn agreement to
this. Harald III of Norway, commonly known as Harald Hardrada,
also contested the succession. His claim to the throne was based on a
supposed agreement between his predecessor Magnus I of Norway,
and the earlier Danish King of England Harthacanute, whereby ifeither died without heir, the other would inherit both England and
Norway. Both William and Harald at once set about assembling troops
and ships for an invasion.
Consequences of the Conquest
Elite replacementA direct consequence of the invasion was the near-total elimination of
the old English aristocracy and the loss of English control over the
Catholic Church in England. William systematically dispossessed
English landowners and conferred their property on his continental
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followers. The Domesday Book meticulously documents the impact of
this colossal programme of expropriation, revealing that by 1086 only
about 5% of land in England south of the Tees was left in English
hands. Even this tiny residue was further diminished in the decadesthat followed, the elimination of native landholding being most
complete in southern parts of the country.
Natives were also soon purged from high governmental and
ecclesiastical office. After 1075 all earldoms were held by Normans,
while Englishmen were only occasionally appointed as sheriffs.
Likewise in the Church senior English office-holders were either
expelled from their positions or kept in place for their lifetimes but
replaced by foreigners when they died. By 1096 no bishopric was held
by any Englishman, while English abbots became uncommon,
especially in the larger monasteries.
English emigration
Large numbers of English people, especially from the dispossessed
former landowning class, ultimately found Norman domination
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unbearable and emigrated. Scotland and the Byzantine Empire were
particularly popular destinations, while others settled in Ireland (as
did Godwine and Magnus, sons of Harold Godwinson), Scandinavia
and perhaps as far afield as Russia and the coasts of the Black Sea.
Governmental systems
Before the Normans arrived, Anglo-Saxon England had one of the
most sophisticated governmental systems in Western Europe. All of
England was divided into administrative units called shires (shares) of
roughly uniform size and shape, which were run by officials known as"shire reeve" or "sheriff". The shires tended to be somewhat
autonomous and lacked coordinated control. English government
made heavy use of written documentation, which was unusual for
kingdoms in Western Europe and made for more efficient governance
than word of mouth.
The English developed permanent physical locations of government.
Most medieval governments were always on the move, holding court
wherever the weather and food or other matters were best at the
moment. This practice limited the potential size and sophistication of a
government body to whatever could be packed on a horse and cart,
including the treasury and library. England had a permanent treasury
at Winchester, from which a permanent government bureaucracy and
document archive began to grow.
This sophisticated medieval form of government was handed over to
the Normans and grew stronger. The Normans centralised the
autonomous shire system. The Domesday survey exemplifies the
practical codification that enabled Norman assimilation of conquered
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territories through central control of a census. It was the first kingdom-
wide census taken in Europe since the time of the Romans, and
enabled more efficient taxation of the Normans' new realm.
Systems of accounting grew in sophistication. A governmentaccounting office called the Exchequer was established by Henry I. In
1150, some years after Henry's death, the Exchequer was established at
the Palace of Westminster. The tradition continues to the present day,
with the office of the Chancellor of the Exchequer at nearby 11
Downing Street, adjacent to number 10, the office of the First Lord of
the Treasury who in modern times is also the Prime Minister of the
United Kingdom, and just a block from HM Treasury at 1 Horse
Guards Road.
Relations with France
After the conquest, relations between the Anglo-Norman monarchy
and the French crown became increasingly fractious. Considerable
hostility had already developed between William and his Capetian
overlords before the invasion of England, and this was soon
exacerbated by Capetian support for his son Robert Curthose, who
fought a series of wars against his father and later against his brothers.
As Dukes of Normandy, William and his descendants were still vassals
of the King of France, but as Kings of England they were his equals.
In the 1150s, with the creation of the Angevin Empire, the Plantagenet
successors of the Norman kings controlled half of France and all of
England, dwarfing the power of the Capetians. The contradictions
inherent in this situation became more problematic as the French
monarchy grew stronger and increasingly assertive in the rights it
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claimed over its vassals. A crisis came in 1204 when Philip II of France
seized all Norman and Angevin holdings in France except Gascony.
In the fourteenth century, the intermittent warfare over the continental
territories of the Kings of England, which had continued since
William's time, escalated into the Hundred Years War, prompted by
the efforts of Edward III to regain his ancestors' lands in France and to
extend the sovereignty he enjoyed in England to his French
possessions, cutting the ties of vassalage binding him to the French
crown. This struggle ended only with the final collapse of the
Plantagenet position in France in 1453, which effectively severed theconnection established in 1066. Thus, the entanglement of the English
kingdom with the continental possessions and interests of the French
magnates who had seized the throne embroiled England in almost
four centuries of recurrent warfare against the Kings of France. These
conflicts gave rise to a deep-rooted and durable tradition of Anglo-
French rivalry and antagonism.
Language
One of the most obvious changes was the introduction of Anglo-
Norman, a northern dialect of Old French, as the language of the ruling
classes in England, displacing Old English. This predominance was
further reinforced and complicated in the mid-twelfth century by an
influx of followers of the Angevin dynasty, speaking a moremainstream dialect of French. Not until the fourteenth century would
English regain its former primacy, while the use of French at court
continued into the fifteenth century.
By this time, English had itself been profoundly transformed,
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developing into the starkly different Middle English, which formed the
basis for the modern language. During the centuries of French
linguistic dominance, a large proportion of the words in the English
language had disappeared and been replaced by French words,leading to the present hybrid tongue in which an English core
vocabulary is combined with a largely French abstract and technical
vocabulary. The grammatical structures of the language had also
changed dramatically, although the relationship, if any, between this
transformation and the marginalisation of English resulting from the
conquest is uncertain.
Linguistic Consequencies on the Language
To many people the Norman Conquest symbolises the submersion of
the English language under the influx of French. This is partly because
a large number of French loan-words entered English in the period
1066 to 1500. In fact the majority of these loans date from the latter halfof that period and most of them are of a more technical and literary
nature than contact between languages at a spoken level would
promote. The view that French completely changed the nature of
English after the Conquest is not sustainable. Although two languages,
English and French, were spoken in England, it is doubtful whether it
ever became a truly bilingual country. The majority of the population
was monolingual and only used English.
Where French was important was in writing.
1. French writing systems were introduced: , , ;
(ME long u), etc.
2.
French books were imported and reproduced;
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3. And the law and other documents were written in French or
Latin. In so far as bilingualism existed it was only in writing , for
to be educated involved not only learning Latin but also
becoming familiar with French.Apart from Celtic, which was spoken by those on the periphery of the
country, three languages were used in England: English and French in
both speech and writing, and Latin as essentially only a written
language. At the spoken level English consisted of numerous dialects,
some of which were probably difficult for speakers of other dialects to
understand. At the written level there was the surviving Old English
standard, which was gradually becoming outdated because it not
longer reflected the speech of most English people. It was also no
longer the prestige written language, because French and Latin were
now supported by the monarchy. It soon became antiquated and was
not the primary language for official business.
It is also important to understand that the men who accompaniedWilliam included not only Normans, but also Frenchmen from other
parts of France. They all spoke their own local variety of French, for at
this time the standardisation of French based round the Ile de France,
which is today known as FRANCIEN, had hardly begun. The French
spoken in England was not the French that ultimately spread from
there to the rest of the country; it is that variety which we know as
Anglo-Norman. Chaucer, in his description of the Prioress in The
Canterbury Tales, mentions that she spoke the French of STRATFORD-
ATTE-BOWE rather than that of Paris. He was not necessarily poking
fun at her, but merely signifying that her French was of the sort found
in England. Because of the use of Anglo-Norman in England, French
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loan-words borrowed before the thirteenth century often show the
phonological characteristics of Anglo-Norman rather than those of
Central French. In many cases English borrowed a word in both its
Anglo-Norman and its Central French form, with the second being thelater loan. Latin initial /k/ remained in Anglo-Norman as /k/, but in
Central French it developed the palatal form /t!/. This difference led
to the English pair CATTLE from Anglo-Norman and CHATTEL from
Central French. Similarly the initial /w/ of Old French was retained in
Anglo-Norman, whereas in Central French it progressed through
/gw/ to /g/. This has led to the following pairs in English from each
of these respective dialects: wage/gage, warrant/guarantee and
wardrobe/garderobe (where the latter is now used in descriptions of
castles and suchlike buildings).
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