hardly escape learning some Saxon words from their mothers or nurses.
On the other hand, many well-to-do Saxons, like parents in later
times, probably had their children taught French because it was
considered aristocratic.

Until 1204 a knowledge of French was an absolute necessity to the
nobles, as they frequently went back and forth between their estates
in Normandy and in England. In 1204 King John lost Normandy, and in
the next reign both English and French kings decreed that no subject
of the one should hold land in the territory of the other. This
narrowing of the attention of English subjects down to England was a
foundation stone in building up the supremacy of the English tongue.

In 1338 began the Hundred Years' War between France and England. In
Edward the Third's reign (1327-1377), it was demonstrated that one
Englishman could whip six Frenchmen; and the language of a hostile and
partly conquered race naturally began to occupy a less high position.
In 1362 Parliament enacted that English should thereafter be used in
law courts, "because the laws, customs, and statutes of this realm, be
not commonly known in the same realm, for that they be pleaded,
shewed, and judged in the French tongue, which is much unknown in the
said realm."

LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD 1066-1400

Metrical Romances.--For nearly three hundred years after the Norman
Conquest the chief literary productions were metrical romances, which
were in the first instance usually written by Frenchmen, but sometimes
by Englishmen (_e.g._ Layamon) under French influence. There were four
main cycles of French romance especially popular in England before the