The Anglo-Saxon language and grammar were slowly changing, though very few new words from French or Latin had yet come into common use. Cow, sheep, calf, and swine were Anglo-Saxon words, as Gurth the swineherd says in "Ivanhoe". Englishmen herded the animals, but the meat of them was called by French names derived from Latin, like beef, mutton, veal, and pork. From the Conquest (1066) to 1200, learning, Latin, and knowledge of French books would filter slowly into the native English mind, partly through sermons; and rich Franklins, and Englishmen in the service of the conquering race, and English priests would be Anglicizing French words. CHAPTER V. GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH. The Stories of Arthur. Of all these Latin chroniclers by far the most important was Geoffrey of Monmouth, Bishop of St. Asaph, who finished his "History of the Britons" about 1147. Geoffrey, as has been said, is not a real historian, but something much more interesting. He introduced to the world the story of King Arthur, which at once became the source and centre of hundreds of French romances, in verse or prose, and of poetry down to Tennyson and William Morris. To Geoffrey, or to later English chroniclers who had read Geoffrey, Shakespeare owed the stories of his plays, "Cymbeline" and "King Lear". Though Geoffrey did not write in English but in Latin, he is one of the chief influences in the literature, not only of England, but of Europe, mediaeval and modern. All readers of the "Morte d'Arthur" of Sir Thomas Malory (about 1470), and the "Idylls of the King," and William Morris's short poems about Arthur and Guinevere, are naturally curious to know if ever there were a real fighting Arthur, and to trace the sources of the countless French and English romances about him and his Court. Where did Geoffrey of Monmouth get his information about this island, from the days of the fabulous Roman who settled it (Brut, or Brutus), to King Arthur's time? We must look at what is known or reported about Arthur.