f eye-witnesses with their graphic
brief descriptions. An Anglo-Norman literature of song and sermon fast
grew up, absolutely identical in tongue with the Norman literature
beyond the Channel, but marked by special characteristics of thought and
feeling. Meanwhile English, as the speech of the common folk, still
lived on as a tongue apart, a tongue so foreign to judges and barons and
Courtiers that authors or transcribers could not copy half a dozen
English lines without a mistake. The serfs and traders who spoke it were
too far removed from the upper court circle to take into their speech
foreign words or foreign grammatical forms; the songs which their
minstrels sang from fair to fair only lived on the lips of the poor, and
left no echo behind them.

CHAPTER XI

THE DEATH OF HENRY

In the last nine years of Henry's reign his work lay elsewhere than in
his English kingdom. They were years spent in a passionate effort to
hold together the unwieldy empire he had so laboriously built up. On the
death of Louis in 1180 the peaceful and timid traditions of his reign
were cast aside by the warlike Philip, who had from childhood cherished
a violent hatred against Henry, and who was bent on the destruction of
rival powers, and the triumph of the monarchy in France. Henry's
absorbing care, on the other hand, was to prevent war; and during the
next four years he constantly forced reconciliation on the warring
princes of France. "All who loved peace rejoiced at his coming," the
chroniclers constantly repeat. "He had faith in the Lord, that if he
crossed over he could make peace." "As though always at his coming peace
should certainly be made."

But in Britanny and in Aquitaine there was no peace. The sons whom he
had set over his provinces had already revolted in 1173. In 1177 fresh
troubles broke out, and from that time their history was one of unbroken
revolt against their father and strife amongst themselves. "Dost thou
not know," Geoffrey once answered a messenger of his father's, sent to
urge him to peace, "that it is our proper nature, planted in us by
inheritance from our ancestors, that none of us should love the other,
but that ever brother should strive against brother, and son against
father. I would not that thou shouldst deprive us of our hereditary
right, nor vainly seek to rob us of our nature!" In 1182 Henry sought
once more to define the authority of his sons, and to assert the unity
of the Empire und