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Anglo-Norman Introduction The Anglo-Normans were the medieval ruling class in England, composed mainly of a combination of ethnic Anglo-Saxons, Normansand French, following the Norman conquest. A small number of Normans had earlier befriended future Anglo-Saxon King of England, Edward the Confessor, during his exile in his mother's homeland of Normandy. When he returned to England some of them went with him, and so there were Normans already settled in England prior to the conquest. Following the death of Edward, the powerful Anglo-Saxon noble, Harold Godwinson, acceded to the English throne until his defeat by William, Duke of Normandy at the Battle of Hastings. The invading Normans came from the duchy of Normandy in the kingdom of France. They formed a ruling class in Britain, distinct from (although inter-marrying with) the native populations. Over time their language evolved from the continental Old Norman to the distinct Anglo-Norman language. Anglo-Normans quickly established control over all of England, as well as parts of Wales (the Cambro-Normans). After 1130, parts of southern and eastern Scotland came under Anglo-Norman rule (the Scoto-Normans), in return for their support of David I's conquest. The Norman conquest of Ireland in 1169 saw Anglo-Normans (or Cambro-Normans) settle vast swaths of Ireland, becoming the Hiberno-Normans.

Anglo-Normans’ Literature Anglo-Norman literature is literature composed in the Anglo-Norman language developed during the period 1066–1204 when the Duchy of Normandy and England were united in the AngloNorman realm.

Anglo-Norman literature, body of literature written in England, in the French dialect known as Anglo-Norman, from c.1100 to c.1250. Initiated at the court of Henry I, it was supported by the wealthy, French-speaking aristocracy who controlled England after the Norman conquest. The dominant literary forms were histories, sacred and secular biographies, and homilies; romance and fiction were relatively scarce. Perhaps the most important historian was Geoffrey Gaimer, whose two-part history of England, Histoire des Bretons and Estorie des Engles, was written in verse. Philippe of Thaün, the earliest known Anglo-Norman poet, was noted for the moral allegory the Bestiaire. Of secular works, Thomas's Tristan (c.1170) is notable both artistically and as an early source for the Tristram and Isolde legend. The most flourishing period of Anglo-Norman literature was from the beginning of the 12th century to the end of the first quarter of the 13th. The end of this period is generally said to coincide with the loss of the French provinces to Philip Augustus, but literary and political history do not correspond quite so precisely, and the end of the first period would be more accurately denoted by the appearance of the history of William the Marshal in 1225 (published for the Société de l'histoire

de France, by Paul Meyer, 3 vols., 1891–1901). It owes its brilliancy largely to the protection accorded by Henry II of England to the men of letters of his day. [3] "He could speak French and Latin well, and is said to have known something of every tongue between the Bay of Biscay and the Jordan. He was probably the most highly educated sovereign of his day, and amid all his busy active life he never lost his interest in literature and intellectual discussion; his hands were never empty, they always had either a bow or a book"

Anglo-Norman’s Language Anglo-Norman, also known as Anglo-Norman French, was a dialect of French[2] that was used in England and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere in the British Isles during the AngloNorman period.[3] When William the Conqueror led the Norman conquest of England in 1066, he, his nobles, and many of his followers from Normandy, but also those from northern and western France, spoke a range of langues d'oïl (northern varieties of Gallo-Romance). One of these was Old Norman, also known as "Old Northern French". Other followers spoke varieties of the Picard language or western French. This amalgam developed into the unique insular dialect now known as AngloNorman French, which was commonly used for literary and eventually administrative purposes from the 12th until the 15th century. It is difficult to know much about what was actually spoken, as what is known about the dialect is restricted to what was written, but it is clear that AngloNorman was, to a large extent, the spoken language of the higher social strata in medieval England. It was spoken in the law courts, schools, and universities and, in due course, in at least some sections of the gentry and the growing bourgeoisie. Private and commercial correspondence was carried out in Anglo-Norman or Anglo-French from the 13th to the 15th century though its spelling forms were often displaced by continental spellings. Social classes other than the nobility became keen to learn French: manuscripts containing materials for instructing non-native speakers still exist, dating mostly from the late 14th century onwards. Although Anglo-Norman and Anglo-French were eventually eclipsed by modern English, they had been used widely enough to influence English vocabulary permanently. Thus, many original Germanic words, cognates of which can still be found in Nordic, German, and Dutch, have been lost or, as more often occurs, exist alongside synonyms of Anglo-Norman French origin. Grammatically, Anglo-Norman had little lasting impact on English although it is still evident in official and legal terms where the ordinary sequence of noun and adjective is reversed, for example attorney general: the spelling is English but the word order (noun then adjective) is French. Other such examples are heir apparent, court martial, and body politic.

Norman Conquest The event that began the transition from Old English to Middle English was the Norman Conquest of 1066, when William the Conqueror (Duke of Normandy and, later, William I of England) invaded the island of Britain from his home base in northern France, and settled in his new acquisition along with his nobles and court. William crushed the opposition with a brutal hand and deprived the Anglo-Saxon earls of their property, distributing it to Normans (and some English) who supported him. The conquering Normans were themselves descended from Vikings who had settled in northern France about 200 years before (the very word Norman comes originally from Norseman). However, they had completely abandoned their Old Norse language and wholeheartedly adopted French (which is a so-called Romance language, derived originally from the Latin, not Germanic, branch of Indo-European), to the extent that not a single Norse word survived in Normandy. However, the Normans spoke a rural dialect of French with considerable Germanic influences, usually called Anglo-Norman or Norman French, which was quite different from the standard French of Paris of the period, which is known as Francien. The differences between these dialects became even more marked after the Norman invasion of Britain, particularly after King John and England lost the French part of Normandy to the King of France in 1204 and England became even more isolated from continental Europe. Anglo-Norman French became the language of the kings and nobility of England for more than 300 years (Henry IV, who came to the English throne in 1399, was the first monarch since before the Conquest to have English as his mother tongue). While Anglo-Norman was the verbal language of the court, administration and culture, though, Latin was mostly used for written language, especially by the Church and in official records. For example, the “Domesday Book”, in which William the Conqueror took stock of his new kingdom, was written in Latin to emphasize its legal authority. However, the peasantry and lower classes (the vast majority of the population, an estimated 95%) continued to speak English - considered by the Normans a low-class, vulgar tongue - and the two languages developed in parallel, only gradually merging as Normans and Anglo-Saxons began to intermarry. It is this mixture of Old English and Anglo-Norman that is usually referred to as Middle English.