Second: In King John’s day Normandy was lost to England--the loss growing largely, in fact, out of the cruelty just named, and its ensuing wars. Losing Normandy had a vast influence upon the growing speech of England. Hitherto the cherished mother-land had been across the channel. Sons of the well-born had been sent over to learn French on French ground: young ladies of fashion ordered, without doubt, their best cloaks and hats from Rouen: the English ways of talk might do for the churls and low-born: but it was discredited by the more cultivated--above all by those who made pursuit of the gayeties and elegancies of life. The priest fraternity and the universities of course kept largely by Latin; and the old British speech only lived in the mountains and in the rattling war-songs of the Welsh bards. But when Norman nobles and knights found themselves cut off from their old home associations with Normandy, and brought into more intimate relations with the best of the English population, there grew up a new pride in the land and language of their adoption. Hence there comes about a gradual weaning from France. London begins to count for more than Rouen. The Norman knights and barons very likely season their talk with what they may have called English slang; and the better taught of the islanders--the sons of country franklins affected more knowledge of the Norman tongue, and came to know the French romances, which minstrels sang at their doors. So it was that slowly, and with results only observable after long lapse of years, the nation and language became compacted into one; and the new English began to be taught in the schools. _Mixed Language._ Of the transition stage, as it was called, there are narrative poems of record, which were written with a couplet in Norman French, and then a couplet in English. There were medleys, too, of these times, in which the friars mingled the three tongues of Latin, French, and English.[26] Blood mingled as languages mingled; and by the middle of the fourteenth century a man was no longer foreign because he was of Norman descent, and no longer vulgar because he was of Saxon. To this transition time--in Henry III.’s day (who had a long reign of fifty-six years--chiefly memorable for its length), there appeared the rhyming Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester;[27]--what we should call a doggerel story of England from fabulous times down, and worthy of mention as the first serious attempt at an English-written history--others noticed already being either merely bald chronicles, or in scholastic Latin, or in French metric form. I give you a little taste of his wooden verse-- ----Lyncolne [has] fairest men, Grantebrugge, and Hontyndon most plente ò deep fen, Ely of fairest place, of fairest site Rochester, Even agen Fraunce stonde ye countre ò Chichester, Norwiche agen Denemark, Chestre agen Irelond, Duram agen Norwei, as ich understonde.