tongues, but 'over the various languages and dialects ran the Latin of the law and government, and the French of the court and affairs.'[1] The theory, that under the Plantagenets the language received a strong admixture of Angevin, does not rest on sufficient evidence.[2] The empire which the Normans had built up so rapidly was pre-eminently a maritime power. The sea-borne trade with Gascony soon became a source of wealth to the monarch and to the community, and furnished the Normans with an opportunity to show their genius for organization. The relations between skippers and merchants on the one hand, between captains and their crews on the other, were regulated; the duties and obligations of all concerned were clearly defined; and for the first time since the days of the Romans, law and order was introduced into a realm where anarchy and violence had long reigned supreme. These old sea-laws, known under the name of Rolls of Oléron were drawn up in Anglo-Norman about the time of King Richard I.[3]
Thus literature and education on the one hand, government and trade on the other, contributed powerfully to mould the speech of the Frenchmen, who streamed into this country in the wake of the Conqueror, into one homogeneous language. But this language once established in England developed independently. For reasons still
- ↑ Haskins, op. cit., p. 88.
- ↑ It has been held by Miss Pope: 'La langue ordinaire qui avait cours était d'une nature composite, car au normand-picard du xie siècle, qui en formait probablement la base, s'était ajouté au cours du xiie siècle, un fort élément angevin (poitevin).' Op. cit., p. 5.
- ↑ Some years ago I made a careful comparison of the oldest versions of the Rolls of Oléron, both Continental and English, and showed that they came from a common source x, written in A.-N. (Oak Book of Southampton, vol. ii, p. lxiv). But, as M. Ch. Bémont pointed out in a very generous review of my work (Revue Historique, cix (1912), p. 395), my further contention that x was probably derived from a Gascon original is based on evidence altogether too slight.
