This class of illumination is, however, very inferior in beauty and decorative splendour to the finest works of the monks of Winchester and Glastonbury, in which solid colour in great variety of tint is used, as, for example in the above-mentioned _Benedictional_ of Aethelwold and the _Pontifical_ of Saint Dunstan. _The Anglo-Norman school._ The Norman conquest of England in 1066 soon put an end to the Anglo-Saxon school of illumination, with its weak imitations of the debased classical style of Italy. In place of this the magnificent Anglo-Norman schools of miniature painting were developed on both sides of the British Channel. England and Normandy became one country, and as long as this union lasted manuscripts of precisely similar character were produced both in Normandy and in England, as is described in the following Chapter. CHAPTER VIII. THE ANGLO-NORMAN SCHOOL OF MANUSCRIPTS. The twelfth century in England and Northern France was a period of rapid artistic development in almost all branches of the arts, from a miniature illumination to a great Cathedral or Abbey church. _The Norman invasion._ _Robert of Gloucester._ With regard, however, to the art of illuminated manuscripts and other branches of art in England it should be observed that though the conquered English and the Norman conquerors with remarkable rapidity were amalgamated with great solidarity into one united people[94], yet for a long period after the Conquest it was distinctly the Norman element that took the lead in all matters of art and literature. The Bishops, Abbots and Priors of the great English ecclesiastical foundations were for a long period wholly or in the main men of the Norman race, and thus (intellectually) the native English took a lower place, and did far less to advance the arts of England than did the Normans who formed the upper and more cultivated class. As Robert of Gloucester the Benedictine monkish Chronicler of the thirteenth century says, Of the Normannes beth thys hey men, that beth of thys lond, And the lowe men of Saxons, as ych understonde[95]. _Architectural growth._ In the eleventh century building in stone on a large scale for military and ecclesiastical purposes had been introduced into England by the Normans in place of the frail wooden structures of the Anglo-Saxons. Towards the close of the twelfth century the Gothic style of architecture, with its pointed arches and quadripartite vaults, was brought to England by the Cistercian monks of northern France, and soon spread far and wide throughout the kingdom. The artists of this century began to study the human form, its pose and movement, and also in their drapery learnt to depict gracefully designed folds with much truth and with a keen sense of beauty[96]. _Anglo-Norman school._