Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/316

Rh 300 ENGLAND [HISTORY. Effects on lite rature. Change in proper names. Use of heredi tary sur names. racter. It remained Teutonic in its essence, Teutonic in its grammatical forms. But it lost its inflexions, more thoroughly than some kindred tongues, not more thoroughly than some others. It also received a vast infusion of Ro mance words into its vocabulary, an infusion far greater in decree, but exactly the same in kind, as the Teutonic infusion into the vocabulary of the Romance languages, especially into French. In literature, as distinguished from language, and also in art, the Norman Conquest is one of the most strongly marked epochs in our history. The breaking down of the barrier between the insular and the continental world did much for both. Learning had gone down again in England through the Danish invasions ; and Eadward the Confessor, with all his fondness for foreigners, did little for foreign scholars. Under William, and his son Henry things altogether changed. The first two occupants of the see of Canterbury after the Conquest were the two greatest scholars of their day. Both of them were strangers in Normandy no less than in England : Lanfranc came from Lombard Pavia, Anselm from Burgunclian Aosta. After them England herself produced a goodly crop of scholars among her children of both races. While the Chronicle was still writing in our own tongue, a crowd of learned pens recorded English history in Latin. Florence of Worcester told the unvarnished tale of the early Norman reigns in a chronicle which is English in all but language. Henry of Huntingdon preserved to us large fragments of our ancient songs in a Latin dress. William of Malmesbury aspired to the character of a critical historian, a character etill more nearly reached somewhat later by William of Newburgh. The statesmen-historians of Henry II. s day follow, and lead us on to the monastic historians of the thir teenth century. Yet, after all, one would gladly exchange much of the light which they give us for a continuation of the English Chronicle in the English tongue. One form of influence on language was the almost com plete exchange of the Old-English proper names for a new set of names which came over with the Conqueror. The strictly Norman proper names, those which the Normans either brought with them from the North or had bor rowed from the Franks, are as truly Teutonic as the Eng lish names ; a few names only were common to both countries. But, just at the time of the Conquest, the Normans were beginning to adopt scriptural and saintly names, which were all but unknown in England. With the Conquest a new fashion set in, and the names, whether Teutonic or saintly, which were in Norman use gradually displaced the ancient English names. A few specially royal and saintly names, like Eadward and Eadmund, alone survived. Throughout the twelfth century we constantly find the father bearing an English name, while the son has one of the new fashion. This point is of importance. It at once marks and hides the fusion of races. It helps us to see that many a man who was to all outward appearance a stranger was in truth of genuine English descent. Along with the change in personal names came in the use of hereditary surnames. Surnames, in the sense of mere personal descriptions or nicknames, were already common both in England and in Normandy, But the hereditary surname, the name of the family handed on from father to son, was at the time of the Conquest unknown in England, and it was only just coming into use in Normandy. The Normans brought the fashion into England, and the circumstances of the Conquest gave it a fresh impulse. While many of the Norman settlers brought with them the surnames which they had already taken from their estates or birth-places in Normandy, a crowd of men of both races now took surnames from their estates and birth-places in England. The fashion to some extent affected local nomen clature also. On the whole, the Norman Conquest made but little change in this way. Few places, if any, lost their names. But some towns, castles, and monasteries of Norman foundation received French names ; and a crowd of English towns and villages did, as it were, take Norman sur names, by taking the name of a Norman lord to distinguish them from other places of the same name. In those days art is almost synonymous with architec- ture, and the changes in that art which were wrought by the Norman Conquest were great indeed. There was then but little room for great displays of artistic architecture anywhere but in churches. But in this, as in all periods of genuine art, the style used for buildings of all classes was the same. Up to the eleventh century all Western Europe had built in one style, in that older form of the Roman esque or round-arched architecture which came direct from Italy and was known as the mos Romanus. Its most striking feature is the tall, slender bell-towers which in Eng land are a sign of work not later than the eleventh century, while iu Germany they go on through the twelfth, and in Italy they never went out of use at all. In the course of the eleventh century several parts of Europe struck out newstyles of their own, which still keep the round arch, and which are therefore properly classed as later varieties of the Roman esque type. One of these arose in Normandy, and was, among other Norman fashions, brought into England by Eadward in the building of his new church at Westminster. After the Conquest the Norman style naturally became the prevailing fashion, One pail of that fashion was the building of churches on a gigantic scale, such as had never before been seen in England. This fashion led the Norman bishops and abbots to pull down and rebuild most of the minsters of England. The earliest Norman style was an advance on the Primitive Romanesque in proportion and in vigour of style, casting off the mere imitation of Roman models which had lingered for so many ages. But in mere amount of ornament it was certainly no advance. The en riched Norman style comes in later. However, from the reign of William, one might perhaps say from the reign of Eadward, the older style gave way to the new. The Primi tive models were now followed only in smaller and less important churches, where the use of the slender bell- towers lasted longer than any other feature. Yet the Norman style, in supplanting the earlier English fashion, was in some measure influenced by it. The Norman churches of England have some distinctly English features of which there is no sign in those of Normandy. We are told that great improvements in domestic archi tecture were brought in by the Normans ; but, when we see the few Norman houses that are left to us, we may be inclined to think that the chief change was the freer appli cation of stone to domestic work. It was only in houses of the very highest class, as in kings palaces, that there was room for any great display of art. Such buildings allowed of the great hall, with rows of columns and arches, like those of a church. For municipal architecture there was as yet no room in our island. But military architecture took one of its greatest steps in this age. Fortification had advanced in England from the hedge or palisade which Ida built at Bamburgh to the wall of squared stones with which ./Ethelstan had surrounded Exeter. But the Ncr/nan castle, name and thing, was brought in as something new in days of Eadward, and the land was covered with them in the days of William. The massive square tower, of which the Conqueror s Tower of London is the greatest example, is one type. The shell-keep, the polygonal wall raised most commonly on a mound of English work, is another type. In the days of our forefathers the castle was the very embodiment of wrong and oppression. The Chronicle never speaks of castle-building without some epithet of horror. Chang&amp;lt; in arcl tecture The N man Norm;