ingly barren of results, helped them in their struggle
toward emancipation. Some bought their freedom with part of their
wages. Others escaped to the towns where new commercial activities
needed more labor. Finally, the common toiler acquired more commanding
influence by overthrowing even the French knights with his long bow.
This period laid the foundation for the almost complete disappearance
of serfdom in the fifteenth century. France waited for the terrible
Revolution of 1789 to free her serfs. England anticipated other great
modern nations in producing a literature of universal appeal because
her common people began to throw off their shackles earlier.

This period opens with a victorious French army in England, followed
by the rule of the conquerors, who made French the language of high
life. It closes with the ascendancy of English government and speech
at home and with the mid-fourteenth century victories of English
armies on French soil, resulting in the rapture of Calais, which
remained for more than two hundred years in the possession of England.

At the close of this period we find Wycliffe, "the morning star of the
Reformation," and Chaucer, the first great singer of the welded
Anglo-Norman race. His wide interest in human beings and his knowledge
of the new Italian literature prefigure the coming to England of the
Revival of Learning in the next age.

It will now be necessary to study the changes in the language, which
were so pronounced between 1066 and Chaucer's death.

THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN ENGLISH

Three Languages used in England--For three hundred years after the
Norman Conquest, three languages were widely used in England. The
Normans introduced French, which was the language of the court and the
aristocracy. William the Conqueror brought over many Norman priests,
who used Latin almost exclusively in their service. The influence of
this book Latin is generally underestimated by those who do not
appreciate the power of the church. The Domesday survey shows that in
1085 the church and her dependents held more than one third of some
counties.

In addition to the Latin and the French (which was itself principally
of Latin origin), there was, thirdly, the Anglo-Saxon, to which the
middle and the lower classes of the English stubbornly adhered. The
Loss of Inflections.--Anglo-Saxon was a language with changing
endings, like modern German. If a Saxon wished to say, "good gifts,"
he had to have the