At the Battle of Hastings, 1066, Kind Harold was killed by the Normans. William was made king of England in London, the next four years he completed his conquest of England and Wales. Norman works in the government and business and controlled the Church. French and Latin were used government, the Church, the law, and literature. Very little was written in English, although English monks continued writing The Anglo-Saxon chronicle.
The use of French continued in England. French was not spoken only by people of Norman or French blood. It was also spoken by English people who wanted to be important.
Slowly, English became more widely used by the Normans. Many of the Normans married English women.
In 1204 King John of England lost Normandy to the King of France, and during the next fifty years all the great landowning families in England had to give away their lands in France. They became less involved with France and began to feel that England was their country.
The upper classes continued to speak French as a second language. However, French started to become less important socially in England, because the Norman French spoken in England was not considered “good” by speakers of Parisian French in France. The upper classes began to feel prouder of their English than of their French.
English was the language of the country, and people were proud of it and of their history.
The continuing bad feeling between England and France resulted in the Hundred years War (1337-1453).
Between 1348 and 1357 England was hit several times by the illness known as the Black Death and almost a third of the people in England died. Monks, school teachers died and were replaced by less educated men who spoke only English.
Many left land and went to work for more money in the towns. As a ordinary people became more important, their language English became more important too. It was used more and more in government, as fewer and fewer people could understand French.
When Henry the Fourth became king in 1399, England had its first English-speaking king since 1066.
English has survived but it had changed.
