A Literary History of the English People Part 10

This is a characteristic example of these new tendencies. The poem is dedicated to a Frenchwoman by a Norman of England, and begins with the praise of a Briton, a Saxon, and a Dane.

In the compiling of chronicles, clerks proceed in the same manner, and this is still more significant, for it clearly proves that the pressing of literature into the service of political ideas is the result of a decided will, and of a preconceived plan, and not of chance. The chroniclers do, indeed, write by command, and by express desire of the kings their masters. One of them begins his history of England with the siege of Troy, and relates the adventures of the Trojans and Britons, as willingly as those of the Saxons or Normans; another writes two separate books, the first in honour of the Britons, and the second in honour of the Normans; a third, who goes back to the time when "the world was established," does not get down to the dukes of Normandy without having narrated first the story of Antenor the Trojan, an ancestor of the Normans, as he believes.[151] The origin of the inhabitants of the land must no longer be sought for under Scandinavian skies, but on Trojan fields. From the smoking ruins of Pergamus came Francus, father of the French, and aeneas, father of Brutus and of the Britons of England. Thus the nations on both sides of the Channel have a common and cla.s.sic ancestry. There is Trojan blood in their veins, the blood of Priam and of the princes who defended Ilion.[152]

From theory, these ideas pa.s.sed into practice, and thus received a lasting consecration; another bond of fraternity was established between the various races living on the soil of Britain: that which results from the memory of wars fought together. William and his successors do not distinguish between their subjects. All are English, and they are all led together to battle against their foes of the Continent. So that this collection of scattered tribes, on an island which a resolute invader had formerly found it so easy to conquer, now gains victories in its turn, and takes an unexpected rank among nations. David Bruce is made prisoner at Neville's Cross; Charles de Blois at Roche Derien; King John at Poictiers; Du Guesclin at Navarette. Hastings has made the defeat of the Armada possible; William of Normandy stamped on the ground, and a nation came forth.

FOOTNOTES:

[130] The romantic events in the life of Harold Hardrada Sigurdson are the subject of an Icelandic saga in prose, by Snorre Sturlason (born at Hvam in Iceland, 1178): "The Heimskringla Saga, or the Sagas of the Norse kings, from the Icelandic of Snorre Sturlason," ed. Laing and R.

B. Anderson, London, 1889, 4 vols. 8vo, vols. iii. and iv. A detailed account of the battle at "Stanforda-Bryggiur" (Stamford-bridge), will be found in chaps. 89 ff.; the battle of "Helsingja port" (Hastings), is told in chap. 100.

[131]

Taillefer ki mult bien chantout, Sor un cheval ki tost alout Devant le duc alout chantant De Karlemaigne et de Rolant E d'Oliver et des va.s.sals Qui morurent en Rencevals.

"Maistre Wace's Roman de Rou," ed. Andresen, Heilbronn, 1877, 2 vols.

8vo, p. 349, a statement reproduced or corroborated by several chroniclers: "Tunc cantilena Rollandi inochata...." William of Malmesbury, "Gesta Regum Anglorum," ed. Hardy, London, 1840, English Historical Society, book iii., p. 415.

[132] William of Poictiers, a Norman by birth (he derived his name from having studied at Poictiers) and a chaplain of the Conqueror, says that his army consisted of "Mancels, French, Bretons, Aquitains, and Normans"; his statement is reproduced by Orderic Vital: "Insisterunt eis Cenomannici, Franci, Britanni, Aquitani et miserabiliter pereuntes cadebant Angli." "Historia Ecclesiastica," in Migne, vol. clx.x.xviii.

col. 298. Vital was born nine years only after the Conquest, and he spent most of his life among Normans in the monastery of St. Evroult.

[133] Charter of William to the city of London: "Will'm kyng gret ...

ealle tha burhwaru binnan Londone, Frencisce and Englisce, freondlice"

(greets all the burghers within London, French and English). At a later date, again, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, in a charter for Lincoln, sends his greetings to his subjects "tam Francis quam Anglis," A.D. 1194.

Stubbs, "Select Charters," Oxford, 1876, pp. 82 and 266.

[134] "Gunnlangs Saga," in "Three northern Love Stories and other Tales," edited by Erikr Magnusson, and William Morris, London, 1875, 12mo.

[135] "The old play of the Wolsungs," in "Corpus Poetic.u.m Boreale," i.

p. 34.

[136] "Maistre Wace's Roman de Rou," ed. Andresen, line 7749. The same story is reproduced by William of Malmesbury (twelfth century). "Arma poposcit, moxque ministrorum tumultu loricam inversam indutus, casum risu correxit, vertetur, inquiens, fort.i.tudo comitatus mei in regnum."

"Gesta Regum Anglorum," 1840, English Historical Society, book iii. p.

415.

[137] William of Malmesbury, _Ibid._

[138] "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" (Rolls), year 1066, Worcester text (Tib.

B. IV.). Same statement in William of Malmesbury, who says of his compatriots that "uno praelio et ipso perfacili se patriamque pessundederint." "Gesta Regum Anglorum," English Historical Society, p.

418.

[139] So says William of Poictiers, and Orderic Vital after him: "...

Nudato insuper capite, detractaque galea exclamans: me inquit conspicite; vivo et vincam, opitulante Deo." "Orderici Vitalis Angligenae ... Historiae Ecclesiasticae, Libri XIII.," in Migne's "Patrologia," vol.

clx.x.xviii. col. 297.

[140] The inventory is carried down to details; answers are required to a number of questions: "... Deinde quomodo vocatur mansio, quis tenuit eam tempore Regis Eadwardi; quis modo tenet; quot hidae; quot carrucae in dominio; quot hominum; quot villani; quot cotarii; quot servi; quot liberi homines; quot sochemani; quantum silvae; quantum prati; quot pascuorum; quot molendina; quot piscinae," &c., &c. "Domesday for Ely"; Stubbs, "Select Charters," Oxford, 1876, p. 86. The Domesday has been published in facsimile by the Record Commission: "Domesday Book, or the great survey of England, of William the Conqueror, 1086," edited by Sir Henry James, London and Southampton, 1861-3, 2 vols. 4to.

[141] Peterborough text of the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," year 1086.

[142] To the extent that England resembled then Jerusalem besieged by t.i.tus: "Quid multa? In diebus eis multiplicata sunt mala in terra, ut si quis ea summatim recenseat, historiam Josephi possint excedere." John of Salisbury, "Policraticus," book vi chap. xviii.

[143] "Videas ubique in villis ecclesias, in vicis et urbibus monasteria, novo aedificandi genere consurgere." The buildings of the Anglo-Saxons, according to the testimony of the same, who may have seen many as his lived in the twelfth century, were very poor; they were pleased with "pravis et abjectis domibus." "Gesta Regum Anglorum," ed.

Hardy, 1840, book iii. p. 418.

[144] William of Malmesbury, _ut supra_, p. 420.

[145] The Conqueror was buried at Caen; Henry II. and Richard Coeur-de-Lion at Fontevrault in Anjou. Henry III. was buried at Westminster, but his heart was sent to Fontevrault, and the chapter of Westminster still possesses the deed drawn at the moment when it was placed in the hands of the Angevin abbess, 20 Ed. I. (exhibited in the chapter house).

[146] "Henry II.," by Mrs. J. R. Green, 1888, p. 22 ("Twelve English Statesmen").

[147] Stubbs, "Seventeen Lectures," 1886, p. 131.

[148] After having congratulated the king upon his intention to teach manners and virtues to a wild race, "indoctis et rudibus populis," the Pope recalls the famous theory, according to which all islands belonged of right to the Holy See: "Sane Hiberniam et omnes insulas, quibus sol just.i.tiae Christus illuxit ... ad jus B. Petri et sacrosanctae Romanae Ecclesiae (quod tua et n.o.bilitas recognoscit) non est dubium pertinere...." The items of the bargain are then enumerated: "Significasti siquidem n.o.bis, fili in Christo charissime, te Hiberniae insulam, ad subdendum illum populum legibus, et vitiorum plantaria inde exstirpanda velle intrare, et de singulis domibus annuam unius denarii B. Petro velle solvere pensionem.... Nos itaque pium et laudabile desiderium tuum c.u.m favore congruo prosequentes ... gratum et acceptum habemus ut ... illius terrae populus honorifice te recipiat et sicut Dominum veneretur." "Adriani papae epistolae et privilegia.--Ad Henric.u.m II. Angliae regem," in Migne's "Patrologia," vol. clx.x.xviii. col. 1441.

[149] As little French as could be, for he did not even know the language of the conquerors, and was on that account near being removed from his see: "quasi h.o.m.o idiota, qui linguam gallicam non noverat nec regiis consiliis interesse poterat." Matthew Paris, "Chronica Majora,"

year 1095.

[150]

En mund ne est, (ben vus l'os dire) Pais, reaume, ne empire U tant unt este bons rois E seinz, c.u.m en isle d'Englois, Ki apres regne terestre Or regnent reis en celestre, Seinz, martirs, e cunfessurs, Ki pur Deu mururent plursurs; Li autre, forz e hardiz mutz, c.u.m fu Arthurs, Aedmunz e Knudz.

"Lives of Edward the Confessor," ed. H. R. Luard (Rolls), 1858; beginning of the "Estoire de Seint Aedward le Rei."

[151] These three poets, all of them subjects of the English kings, lived in the twelfth century; the oldest of the three was Gaimar, who wrote, between 1147 and 1151 (P. Meyer, "Romania," vol. xviii. p. 314), his "Estorie des Engles" (ed. Hardy and Martin, Rolls, 1888, 2 vols., 8vo), and, about 1145, a translation in French verse of the "Historia Britonum" of Geoffrey of Monmouth (see below, p. 132).--Wace, born at Jersey (1100?-1175, G. Paris), translated also Geoffrey into French verse ("Roman de Brut," ed. Leroux de Lincy, Rouen, 1836, 2 vols. 8vo), and wrote between 1160 and 1174 his "Geste des Normands" or "Roman de Rou" (ed. Andresen, Heilbronn, 1877, 2 vols. 8vo). He wrote also metrical lives of saints, &c.--Benoit de Sainte-More, besides his metrical romances (see below, p. 129), wrote, by command of Henry II., a great "Chronique des ducs de Normandie" (ed. Francisque Michel, "Doc.u.ments inedits," Paris, 1836, 3 vols. 4to).

[152] Even under the Roman empire, nations had been known to attribute to themselves a Trojan origin. Luca.n.u.s states that the men of Auvergne were conceited enough to consider themselves allied to the Trojan race.

Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus, fourth century, states that similar traditions were current in Gaul in his time: "Aiunt quidam paucos post excidium Trojae fugientes Graecos ubique dispersos, loca haec occupa.s.se tunc vacua."

"Rerum Gestarum," lib. xv. cap. ix. During the Middle Ages a Roman ancestry was attributed to the French, the Britons, the Lombards, the Normans. The history of Brutus, father of the Britons, is in Nennius, tenth century(?); he says he drew his information from "annalibus Romanorum" ("Historia Britonum," ed. Stevenson, Historical Society, London, 1838, p. 7). The English historians after him, up to modern times, accepted the same legend; it is reproduced by Matthew Paris in the thirteenth century, by Ralph Higden in the fourteenth, by Holinshed in Shakesperean times: "This Brutus ... was the sonne of Silvius, the sonne of Ascanius, the sonne of aeneas the Troian, begotten of his wife Creusa, and borne in Troie, before the citie was destroied." Chronicles, 1807, 6 vols. fol. book ii. chap. 1. In France at the Renaissance, Ronsard chose for his hero Francus the Trojan, "because," as he says, "he had an extreme desire to honour the house of France."

CHAPTER II.

_LITERATURE IN THE FRENCH LANGUAGE UNDER THE NORMAN AND ANGEVIN KINGS._

I.

What previous invaders of the island had been unable to accomplish, the French of William of Normandy were finally to realise. By the rapidity and thoroughness of their conquest, by securing to themselves the a.s.sistance of those who knew how to use a pen, by their continental wars, they were to bring about the fusion of all the races in one, and teach them, whether they intended it or not, what a mother country was.

They taught them something else besides, and the results of the Conquest were not less remarkable from a literary than from a political point of view. A new language and new ideas were introduced by them into England, and a strange phenomenon occurred, one almost unique in history. For about two or three hundred years, the French language remained superimposed upon the English; the upper layer slowly infiltrated the lower, was absorbed, and disappeared in transforming it. But this was the work of centuries. "And then comes, lo!" writes an English chronicler more than two hundred years after Hastings, "England into Normandy's hand; and the Normans could speak no language but their own, and they spoke French here as they did at home, and taught it to their children: so that the high men of this land, who are come of their race, keep all to that speech which they have taken from them." People of a lower sort, "low men," stick to their English; all those who do not know French are men of no account. "I ween that in all the world there is no country that holds not to her own speech, save England alone."[153]

The diffusion of the French tongue was such that it seemed at one time as if a disappearance of English were possible. All over the great island people were found speaking French, and they were always the most powerful, the strongest, richest, or most knowing in the land, whose favour it was well to gain, and whose example it was well to imitate.

Men who spoke only English remained all their lives, as Robert of Gloucester tells us, men of "little," of nothing. In order to become something the first condition was to learn French. This condition remained so long a necessary one, it was even impossible to foresee that it should ever cease to exist; and the wisest, during that period, were of opinion that only works written in French were a.s.sured of longevity.

Gerald de Barry, who had written in Latin, regretted at the end of his life that he had not employed the French language, "gallic.u.m," which would have secured to his works, he thought, a greater and more lasting fame.[154]

Besides the force lent to it by the Conquest, the diffusion of the French tongue was also facilitated by the marvellous renown it then enjoyed throughout Europe. Never had it a greater; men of various races wrote it, and the Italian Brunetto Latini, who used it, gave among other reasons for so doing, "that this speech is more delightful and more common to all people."[155] Such being the case, it spread quickly in England, where it was, for a long time, the language used in laws and deeds, in the courts of justice, in Parliamentary debates,[156] the language used by the most refined poets of the period.