The Norman Conquest began in 1066. The Normans were by origin a Scandinavian tribe who two centuries back began their inroads on the Northern part of France and finally occupied the territory on both shores of the Seine. The French King Charles the Simple ceded to the Normans the territory occupied by them, which came to be called Normandy. The Normans adopted the French language and culture, and when they came to Britain they brought with them the French language.
In 1066 King Edward the Confessor died, and the Norman Duke William, profiting by the weakness of King Harold who succeeded King Edward on the English throne, invaded England. He assembled an army, landed in England and in a battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066 managed to defeat Harold and proclaimed himself King of England.
The Norman conquest had far-reaching consequences for the English people and the English language.
The English nobility perished through different reasons and was replaced by the Norman barons. The new king William confiscated the estates of the Anglo-Saxons nobility and distributed them among the Norman barons. The Norman conquerors continued pouring into England thousands after thousands, years and years after the conquest, and during the reign of King William over 200,000 Frenchmen settled in England and occupied all positions of prominence in the country, be it in court. Parliament, Church or school.
The heritage of the Norman Conquest was manifold. It united England to Western Europe, opening the gates to European culture and institutions, theology, philosophy and science. The Conquest in effect meant a social revolution in England. The lands of the Saxon aristocracy were divided up among the Normans, who by 1087 composedalmost 10% of the total population. Each landlord, in return forhis land, had to take an oath of allegiance to the king and providehim with military services if and when required.
The Saxon machinery of governmentwas immensely reinforced, with a Norman monarch and his officialsas effective centralised controllers. Royal power was spread toprovinces, royal justice was much more impartially done. The Normans created a strong medieval monarchy which was gradually to complete the unification of England. The 131h century witnessed the appearance of the first parliament, or a council of barons, which later was changed to a national Parliament, representing the nobility, clergy, knights of the shires and major cities.
The Norman conquerors, though Germanic by origin, were French by their language, habits and customs. They were a people and a class that stood aloof from the conquered English, whose habits and customs they despised and whose language they could not understand. They spoke French and addressed people in French. They taught their children French — the only language they could speak, which is noticed by many writers and scholars. And for more than two centuries after the conquest the English country was ruled by French-speaking Kings and nobility, and the French language was the state language of the country.
The Norman Conquest put an end to the West Saxon literary language. But eventually after a prolonged struggle the English language got ascendance over French and again became the state language of the country. The victorious and defeated peoples continued to speak their own languages. The language spoken and written by the English continued to develop in accordance with tendencies already active before the conquest.
The English language emerged after the struggle, but it came in a different position. Its vocabulary was enriched by a great number of French words and its grammatical structure underwent material changes.
They generally mention the following decisive steps in the way upward of the English language after the Norman conquest:
a) 1258 — Proclamation of King Henry III was published besides French also in English:
b) 1362 — the English language became the language of Parliament, courts of law: later, at the end of the century — the language of teaching;
c) the rule of King Henry IV (1399—1413) — the first king after the conquest whose native tongue was English.
The end of the 14th century also saw the firs! "English" translation of the Bible, and Chaucer was writing his "English" masterpieces. The new merchant class and the spread of lay learning were building a national civilisation, and by the end of the century French had probably died out as a spoken language.
Formation of the English national language
We can speak about the English national language as a language understood and mainly used throughout the country beginning with late Middle English — Early New English. They generally say that the end of the Middle English period and the beginning of New English is marked by the following events in the life of the English people:
1. The end of the war between the White and the Red Rose — 1485 and the establishment of an absolute monarchy on the British soil with Henry Tudor as the first absolute monarch — the political expression of the English nation.
The War of the Roses (1455—1485) was the most important event of the 151h century which marked the decay of feudalism and the birth of a new social order It signified the rise of an absolute monarchy in England and a political centralisation, and consequently a linguistic centralisation leading to a predominance of the national language over local dialects.
2. The introduction of printing — 1477 by William Caxton (1422— 1490).
Printing was invented in Germany by Johann Gutenberg in 1438. It quickly spread to other countries and England was among them. The first English printing office was founded in 1476 by William Caxton, and in 1477 there appeared the first book to be printed in England called The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers. The appearance of a considerable number of printed books contributed to the normalisation of spelling and grammar forms fostering the choice of a single variant over others. William Caxton established a printing-press at Westminster, from which he issued a stream of books, many of them translated from Latin and French by himself. Caxton, a native of Kent, acquired the London dialect and made a conscious choice from among competing variants, which he even described in a preface to one of his translations, saying that he had submitted it to princess Margaret, sister of the then king, and "anon she found a default in my English which she commanded me to amend."
Since that time — the end of the 15th century the English language began its development as the language of the English nation, whereas up to that time, beginning with the Germanic conquest of Britain in the 5th century and up to the 15th century, what we call the English language was no more than a conglomerate of dialects, first tribal and then local. Indeed, a notable feature of the Middle English period is the dialectical variety that finds expression in the written documents. It was only late in the 141h century that the London dialect, itself a mixture of the southern and south-eastern dialects, began to emerge as the dominant type.
Thus, the English national language was formed on the basis of the London dialect which was uppermost among Middle English dialects due to the political, geographical, economic and "linguistic" position of London which became the capital of England already in the 11th century — before the Norman conquest and which was in the 15th century a thriving economic centre and port of England due to its geographical position near the estuary of the largest river in England. The geographical position of London as a large port and city in the centre of the country where people of the North mingled with people of the South, on the one hand, enabled the Londoners to acquire features of both southern and northern dialects, and on the other hand, the people coming to London helped to spread the London dialect all over the country.
The importance of the London dialect as the foundation of the English national language grew also because of the fact that many of the best writers of the 14th—15th centuries, and Geoffrey Chaucer among them, whose poetry achieved tremendous contemporary prestige and popularity, were Londoners or used the London dialect in their writings. As we have said, the 15th century is generally referred to as the time of the beginning of the English national language. But the literary norm of the language was established later, already in Early New English, many English authors of the forthcoming centuries contributing to it, among them such as Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Johnson and, finally, William Shakespeare.
