The Heimskringla

WILLIAM THE NORMAN ruled England. Norman knights and nobles
filled all the posts of honor at court, all the great places in
the land. Norman bishops and abbots ruled in church and
monastery. The Norman tongue was alone the speech in court and
hall, Latin alone was the speech of the learned. Only among the
lowly, the unlearned, and the poor was English heard.

It seemed as if the English tongue was doomed to vanish before
the conquering Norman, even as the ancient British tongue had
vanished before the conquering English. And, in truth, for two
hundred years it might have been thought that English prose was
dead, "put to sleep by the sword." But it was not so. It slept,
indeed, but to awake again. For England conquered the conqueror.
And when English Literature awoke once more, it was the richer
through the gifts which the Norman had brought.

One thing the Normans had brought was a liking for history, and
soon there sprang up a whole race of chroniclers. They, like
Bede, were monks and priests. They lived in monasteries, and
wrote in Latin. One after another they wrote, and when one laid
down his pen, another took it up. Some of these chroniclers were
mere painstaking men who noted facts and dates with care. But
others were true writers of literature, who told their tales in
vivid, stirring words, so that they make these times live again
for us. The names of some of the best of these chroniclers are
Eadmer, Orderic Vitalis, and William of Malmesbury.

By degrees these Norman and Anglo-Norman monks became filled with