he 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, explanations changed and came nearer the truth. Social and educational reasons provide the basic causes. The rhyming chronicle of Robert of Gloucester at the end of the thirteenth century summed up the situation admirably:
And the Normans could not then speak any speech but their own; and they spoke French as they did at home, and had their children taught the same. So that the high men of this land, that came of their blood, all retain the same speech which they brought from their home. For unless a man know French, people regard him little; but the low men hold to English, and to their own speech still. I ween there be no countries in all the world that do not hold to their own speech, except England only. But undoubtedly it is well to know both; for the more a man knows, the more worth he is.
Trevisa later put the matter even more strongly, observing that uplandish men (the very word used by Byrhtferth of his rustic priests) liken themselves to gentle- men, strive with great effort to speak French, so that they might be more highly regarded. Heavy social pressure made it essential for a man to speak French, initially (though this applied to few in the eleventh century) if he were to play an active part in the new feudal world, but increasingly as French became the language of commerce and of gentility on a much wider basis.
But let us take the argument back directly to the Norman Conquest and what do we find? In government and administration, writs were issued by the Conqueror in English but not for long. By the 1070s Latin was the language of the Chancery. Anglo-Saxon England had enjoyed two languages for permanent record, English and Latin. Now there was to be one, Latin alone. Yet remember that we treat of record and not of substance. The spoken language of the courts, shires and hundreds, was as it had always been, the vernacular in the full sense, the language of Devon or Norfolk or Yorkshire or the land between Ribble and Mersey. Legal texts in Anglo-Saxon continued to be copied, the laws of Edward the 