ment, and at the same time serve to exemplify the Eng-、 lish of De Brunne's day. The following passages are from the Prologue to the first part of the Chronicle, which Hearne has printed in the preface to his edition of the second part :— "Lordynges [Lords] that be now here, If ye wille listene and lere [learn] Als [as] Robert Mannyng wryten it fand [written it found], Not for the lered [learned], bot for the lewed [unlearned] ; For tho [those] that in this lond wonn [dwell] That the Latin no Frankys conn [Latin nor French know], In felawschip when thai [they] sitt samen [together]. After the Bretons the Inglis camen; The lordschip of this lande thai namen [took]; South and north, west and est, That calle men now the Inglis gest [history?] When thai first amang the Bretons, That now ere [are] Inglis, than [then] were Saxons, I mad noght for no disours [diseurs, professed tale-tellers], That strange Inglis can not ken [know, understand]; In ryme wate [wot, know] neuer what it is. Of Brunne I am, if any me blame; Robert Mannyng is my name: Blissed be he of God of heuene [heaven], That me Robert with gude wille neuene [named]. In the thrid Edwarde's tyme was I When I wrote alle this story. In the hous of Sixille* I was a throwe [while]; Dans [Dominus] Robert of Maltone, that ye know The following is from the Prologue to another of De Brunne's performances, his translation (preserved in MS. in the Bodleian Library) of Bishop Grosthead's Manuel Peche (or Manual of Sins) : "For lewede [unlearned, lay] men Y [I] undyrtoke For many ben of swyche manere [be of such manner] Love men to lestene trotevale [truth and all]. To alle Crystyn men undir sunne, And to gode men of Brunne; And speciali alle be name The felaushepe of Symprynghame; In alle godenesse that may to prow [profit] Of Brymwake yn Kestevene, Syxe myle besyde Sympryngham evene [exactly?] I dwelled in the Pryorye, Fyftene yere yn cumpanye, In the tyme of gode Dane [Dominus] Ione Of Camelton, that now ys gone ; In hys tyme was I ther ten yeres, And knewe and herde of hys maneres ; Sythyn [since] with Dan Ion of Clyntone, Fyve wyntyr wyth hym gan I wone [did I dwell]. *Perhaps this should be Six Mile House. In the next extract the author describes himself as having resided in the Priory of Brymwake in Kesteven (one of the divisions of Lincolnshire) "syx myle besyde Sympryngham [Sempringham]." Dan Felyp [Philip] was maystyr in that tyme The yeres of grace fyl [fell] than [then] to be In that tyme turned y thys On [into] Englysh tunge out of Frankys [French].” (From Warton's History of English Poetry, i. 64.) This translation from Grosthead, it would appear from what is here said, was begun about a quarter of a century before the Chronicle translated from Langtoft. But, upon the whole, it may be held that, in the history of the language, Robert of Gloucester represents the first and Robert of Brunne the last half of the Period of Early English. XVII. Meanwhile, in the literature of the country, and also in the oral intercourse of the most influential classes of the population, the native language may be said to have been for the First century after the Norman Conquest completely overborne by the French; for the Second, to have been in a state of revolt against that foreign tongue; during the Third, to have been rapidly making head against it and regaining its old supremacy. OR the three stages may be thus distinguished :— The first, comprehending the reigns of the Conqueror, his two sons, and Stephen, a space of 88 years; the second, the reigns of Henry II., his two sons, and Henry III., a space of 118 years; the third, the reigns of Edward I., II., and III., a space of 105 years.* In a loose or general sense the first and second of these spaces will correspond to what has been designated the *The reign of William I. (the Conqueror) began in 1066; that of his son, William II. (Rufus), in 1087; that of his brother, Henry I., in 1100; that of Stephen in 1135; that of Henry II. in 1154; that of his son, Richard I. (Cœur de Lion), in 1189; that of his brother, John, in 1199; that of his son, Henry III., in 1216; that of his son, Edward I., in 1272; that of his son, Edward II., in 1307; that of his son, Edward III., in 1327; and he reigned till 1377, or 311 years from the Conquest. G Period of Semi-Saxon, and the third to the Period of Early English. What professes to be our earliest notice of the introduction of the French tongue into England, and of the extent to which it speedily came to be used, is found in the work styled The History of the Abbey of Croyland by Ingulphus (Ingulfi Croylandensis Historia). Ingulphus was abbot of the monastery of Croyland, or Crowland, in Lincolnshire, from A.D. 1075 till 1109, when he died at the age of eighty. He was, therefore, at the time of the Norman Conquest, a man of between thirty and forty. But the History which bears his name is now generally regarded as a forgery of a later age, most probably of the beginning of the fourteenth or the end of the thirteenth century. It may, however, have been founded in part upon traditions or even documents of earlier origin. The amount of what it states upon the present subject is :-That even before the Conquest, in the reign of the Confessor, all the English nobility, following the fashion of the king, himself a Norman in all his habits and feelings, and of the other Normans with whom he had filled the highest offices in the kingdom, began both to speak French and to have their charters and other writings drawn up in that language; and that, after the Conquest, not only were the laws and statutes of the realm promulgated in French, but that language was substituted for English in teaching boys at school the elements of grammar. The fact, however, is, as has been already stated, that the laws were published in Latin for more than two centuries after the Conquest. If they were ever also published in French, which is doubtful, and can hardly have been the case except in a |