ecdota Literaria," London, 1844, 8vo, p. 96, time of
Edward I., imitated from the "Chastoiement des Dames," in Barbazan and
Meon, vol. ii.

[379] Th. Wright, "Specimens of Lyric Poetry, composed in England in the
reign of Edward I.," Percy Society, 1842, 8vo, p. 43.

[380] They wrote in French, Latin, and English, using sometimes the
three languages in the same song, sometimes only two of them:

Scripsi haec carmina in tabulis!
Mon ostel est en mi la vile de Paris:
May y sugge namore, so wel me is;
Yef hi deye for love of hire, duel hit ys.

Wright, "Specimens of Lyric Poetry," p. 64.

[381]

Femmes portent les oyls veyrs
E regardent come faucoun.

T. Wright, "Specimens," p. 4.

[382]

Heo hath a mury mouth to mele,
With lefly rede lippes lele
Romaunz forte rede.

Ibid., p. 34.

[383] Ibid., p. 51.

BOOK III.

_ENGLAND TO THE ENGLISH._

CHAPTER I.

_THE NEW NATION._

I.

In the course of the fourteenth century, under Edward III. and Richard
II., a double fusion, which had been slowly preparing during the
preceding reigns, is completed and sealed for ever; the races
established on English ground are fused into one, and the languages they
spoke become one also. The French are no longer superposed on the
natives; henceforth there are only English in the English island.

Until the fourteenth year of Edward III.'s reign, whenever a murder was
committed and the authors of it remained unknown, the victim was _prima
facie_ assumed to be French, "Francigena," and the whole county was
fined. But the county was allowed to prove, if it could, that the dead
man was only an Englishman, and in that case there was nothing to pay.
Bracton, in the thirteenth century, is very positive; an inquest was
necessary, "ut sciri possit utrum interfectus _Anglicus_ fuerit, vel
_Francigena_."[384] The _Anglicus_ and the _Francigena_ therefore still
subsisted, and were not equal before the law. The rule had not fallen
into disuse, since a formal statute was needed to repeal it; the statute
of 1340, which abolishes the "presentement d'Englescherie,"[385] thus
sweeping away one of the most conspicuous marks left behind by the
Conquest.

About the same time the fusion of idioms took place, and the English
language was definitively constituted. At the beginning of the
fourteenth century, towards 1311, the text of the king's oath was to be
found in Latin among the State