ame attitude appears elsewhere in his writing. At one paint he says that he could add many things from the writing of men of learning, but because he knows these things seem sufficiently complex to clerks and rustic: priests, he addresses his words to young monks who have occupied their childhood with scientific works, such as those of Sergius, Priscian, Cato and Bede. In his emphasis on 'rustic priests' (uplendisca preost ) he gives a valuable clue to the reasons for the strength of the vernacular in late Anglo-Saxon England. The Church was stronger than its Latinity.
Medical knowledge was also available in English to 'uplandish priests', presumably as well as to others, in the shape of the Leechdoms. There was also considerable botanical knowledge. Betony was the herbal maid of all work, useful for twenty-nine distinct aches and pains.
If a man's head be broke [we read] take the same weed [i.e. betony], scrape it and rub it very small to dust, then take two drams weight and swallow it in hot beer. Then the head heals very quickly after the drink.
Or again there is a splendid passage, illustrating linguistic sense as well as botanical knowledge, on the humble fleawort.
This wort is called psyllion, since it has seeds like fleas [psylla meaning flea], whence in Latin also it is named pulicone [from pulicem , flea] and some men call it flea-wort. It has minute leaves and rough, and it has a stalk tufted with side shoots, and it is by nature dry and tender and is produced in cultivated places.
In prose this last century of Anglo-Saxon England had produced work of variety and vitality, even if little enduring creative work was written after about 1020. In poetry, too, the period had much to offer, mare perhaps in the preservation of the best poetry in the great codices written about AD 1000 than in new creation. Variety again abounded, epic poetry from Beowulf to Maldon, poems on exotic beasts, riddles, gnomic verses, one exquisite lyric, the love-poem of Wulf and Eadwacer, and one of the greatest religious poems, the Dream of the Rood, sophisticated, turbulent, tormented. Whoever painted the picture of stolid, unimaginative Saxons knew nothing of their poetry and little of their art.
In law, in administration, in religion, prose and poetry the English language was used vigorously and effectively. Does this advance serious historical argument at all? Does it do more than tell us that the English were English? We may here miss the point. To be as self-consciously English in the eleventh century as the mass of surviving material suggests may indicate an unusual precocity in government, in the art of record-making, in literary self-awareness. The level of lay literacy in late Anglo-Saxon England appears to have been surprisingly high. This much ravaged, much conquered but intrinsically rich land demanded a degree of permanent intelligible record well above the average.
What happened to all this wealth of language development under the Normans? The main lines are clear. Latin replaced Anglo-Saxon completely as the language of government record and administrative record. Norman magnates, Norman prelates, Norman government officers, Domesday commissioners, clerks of all description, expected records to be kept in Latin. Socially the language of the court and so of society became the language spoken by the conquerors, that is to say Norman French, but Norman French did not serve as a replacement for Anglo-Saxon in government or in literature, As a literary language French is not important in England until the second half of the twelfth century, as a language of law and government not until well into the thirteenth.
So we come to the most difficult and complex problem of all. Was English deliberately suppressed at the time of the Norman Conquest) Succeeding generations were interested in the problem, sometimes getting the answers heavily wrong. Many in the twelfth century saw William as responsible for the introduction of written law, presumably in Latin, a totally false concept. Later as French became more general and fashionable,