The lower orders of the people clung persistently to their own old Saxon tongue, a fact clearly demonstrated by the way the old Saxon field-names are to the present day retained, and flowers, animals, and matters of everyday country-life bear names of evident Saxon origin. The Saxons were a conquered race, and as such became the servants of their conquerors. The animals which in life they tended were eaten by the Norman nobles, who called them, when used as food, by names of French derivation. Thus the Saxon ‘sheep’ when dead became ‘mutton’; ‘pig’ turned into ‘pork’; ‘calf’ into ‘veal,’ etc. With the names of many wildflowers French origin is traceable, especially with cultivated sorts. We know the monks of the Middle Ages were clever gardeners, and probably by them the wildflowers were named. In Berkshire the village children call field-daisies ‘margs,’ abbreviated, without doubt, from the French _marguerite_. Among garden flowers there are pansies, French _pensé_; gillyflower, _giroflél_, and many others; but as a whole there are few words of distinctly Latin origin to be found in the English dialects relating to everyday affairs. Norman-French did not come into immediate use in legal documents after the Conquest. The earliest deeds of the Norman kings were written in Latin, but after a while French, the everyday language of the upper classes, superseded it for law work--possibly there were duplicate copies of the deeds in both languages--but only for a comparatively short period, a statute being passed in the thirty-sixth year of King Edward III. deciding upon Latin as the law language of the realm, and from this date the use of Norman-French died out, and the English language may be said to have commenced. The growing dislike of the English to foreign prelates led to a steady resistance of their claims, culminating in the Statutes of Mortmain, Provisors and Præmunire, and finally in the suppression of all alien priories and foreign cells. This stopped the influx of French and Italian monks to our shores; so it was that, after nearly four centuries, the Norman-French language died out and was forgotten. During the Middle Ages, and until the time of the Reformation, the monasteries still continued to be the principal seats of learning throughout the country, and Latin held its ground among scholars and lawyers. The introduction of printing, and, finally, the changes wrought by the Reformation, disturbed the pre-existing course of things. The English language was gradually settling down into its present form, and about the end of the fifteenth century it began more and more to be used for law business transactions.