Module IV
THE NORMAN CONQUEST. LANGUAGES.
VOCABULARY LIST:
Task 1. Read, translate and learn the following words:
Adopt, battle, the Bible, Christian, church, conqueror, conquest, landowner, faith, noble, peasant, general use, language, king, law, complete, remain, feudal, to condemn, to declare, shield, plunder, to ally.
Task 2. Make up your own sentences with the words from the vocabulary list.
Task 3. Work with the dictionary. Search for the synonyms, antonyms, derivatives to any 5 words from the vocabulary list.
Task 4. Get ready for the spelling dictation upon the words from the vocabulary list.
Task 5. Read and translate the text:
THE NORMAN CONQUEST. LANGUAGES.
The conquest of England by the Normans began in 1066 with the battle of Hasting, where the English fought against the Normans. The conquest was complete in 1071.
The Duchy of Normandy was a flourishing feudal territory, the richest in France. It had a very good military organization for those times. The Duke of Normandy was the head of heavy-armoured cavalry consisting of his vassals. Having many towns in the duchy William obtained considerable income in tax which enabled him to have his own military units.
Having heard of Edvard’s death William claimed that the English crown had been promised to him. Then William addressed the Pope (Alexander II) to sanction his invasion to England. The Pope wanted the English church to have closer ties with Rome. So he condemned and excommunicated Harold and his adherents and declared William the lawful claimant of the English throne. William started his preparation for the war.
In the meantime, Harold’s brother allied himself with William, raised an army in the north and invaded Northumberland. The king of England had his army ready for William, but at this moment he was forced to go north to subdue the rebel barons and the invaders. The soldiers were trained in methods of warfare unknown in England. The English used horses to move swiftly from place to place, but continued to fight on foot in a dense mass behind the traditional shield wall. Their principal weapon was the axe. The Normans employed a skillful combination of heavy-armoured cavalry and crossbowmen. This was the military reason for William’s victory in the battle which lasted 9 hours.
Londoners, being afraid of fire and plunder, surrended the city. On Christmas Day William was crowned at Westminster. All land in England was solely and wholly owned by the king.
The Normans were Vikings or "Northmen", men from the North. Some 150 years before the conquest of England they came to a part of France, opposite England, a part which we now call Normandy. There they adopted the Christian faith, the French language and the Roman law of their nеw home in France. They became French.
The Norman Conquest gave England kings and nobles. The Normans also brought with them the French language. After the Norman Conquest there were three languages in England. There was Latin, the language of church, the language which all learned men wrote and spoke. The kings wrote their laws in Latin for some time after the conquest. It was difficult for the people to understand these laws. Then there was French, the language which the kings and the nobles spoke and which many people wrote. Finally, there was the English language which remained the language of the masses of the people. Some men might know all these languages; many knew two; but most.of the poor pеорlе knew only one. There were some people who understood the French language though they couldn’t speak it. Rich people who owned land, the landowners, often knew French and Latin. But poor people, the peasants, did not understand French and Latin. They understood only English.
In time, however, there came the general use of the English language. About 1350 English became the language of law; and at that time there lived the first teacher who taught his boys to read, write English and to translate not from Latin into French, but from Latin into English. Then between 1350 and 1400 there lived Wycliffe who made the first complete translation of the Bible into English, and Chaucer, the father of English poetry.
The English language when it came into general use was not quite the same as it was before the Conquest. The grammar remained but many words саmе into it from the French language.
Task 6. Search the text for English equivalents of the following words and word-combinations. Learn them by heart:
завоювання Англії, битися, християнська віра, битва при Гастинзі, з латинської на французьку мову, римське право, королі та знать, мова церкви, розуміти закони, мова народу, поміщик (землевласник), селянин, переклад Біблії, батько англійської поезії, загальне вживання, той самий(однаковий), квітуча територія, військова організація, підготовка до війни, подавити повстання, бути коронованим, тим часом.
Task 7. Answer the following questions. Ask your own questions (not less than 5).
1. When did the Norman Conquest of England begin?
2. Who were the Northmen?
3. What language did the Normans speak when they conquered England?
4. What did the Norman Conquest do to England?
5. How many languages were there in England after the Norman Conquest?
6. Who spoke French?
7. What languages did the peasants understand?
8. When did English become the language of law?
9. Who do the English call the father of the English poetry?
Task 8. Make up an outline of the text and be ready to retell the text.
Task 9. Read and translate the dialogue. Learn it by heart.
-Do you know anything about the Norman Conquest of England?
-Yes, it started with the battle of Hasting in 1066 and was complete in 1071. It influenced the country’s development greatly.
-It also influenced the cultural life of the English, didn’t it?
-You are right. Especially it influenced the English language.
-The English language when it came into general use was not quite the same as it was before the Conquest. What changed, I wonder?
-The grammar remained but many words саmе into it from the French language.
-When did English become the language of literature?
-It was somewhere between 1350 and 1400 when Wycliffe made the first complete translation of the Bible into English.
-As far as I know Henry Chaucer, the father of English poetry, wrote his famous “Tristan and Isolde” in English, too.
Task 10. Search the text for irregular verbs in the Past Indefinite (not less than 7). Give their infinitive, Participle I (-ing form), Participle II. Fill in the table. Make up your own sentences denoting the tense forms.
Infinitive | Past Indefinite | Participle II | Participle I |
To begin 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. | began | begun | beginning |
1.It is time to begin the class. We began to read that text 2 weeks ago (Past Ind.). They have already begun to translate the text (Pres. Perf.). It had begun to rain before we woke up (Past Perf.). We are beginning our conversation (Pres. Cont.).
Task 11. Translate into Ukrainian using the vocabulary list:
Task 12. Homereading. Read and translate the text. Write out 20 new words and learn them by heart.
The End of Saxon England. The Norman Conquest.
1. Three generations after the death of Alfred a clearly marked degeneration of English culture and institutions set in. The now virtually complete break-up of the tribal structure had been accompanied by an advance towards feudalism, but English society seemed to be unable from its own momentum г to pass beyond a certain point. It is possible that the, halt was only temporary but speculation on this point is unprofitable since, in fact, two invasions, one by the Danes under Sweyn and Canute and later that of the Normans, cut short the time in which a recovery might have been made.
2. During the Tenth Century the consolidation of England into a single kingdom went hand in hand with the creation of an organization into shires, often centering round Alfred's burgh or those of the Danes. While the earlier and smaller kingdoms could be administered from a single centre, there was no machinery adequate to cover the whole country, and, though, the shire reeve or sheriff was in theory responsible to the King for the administration of the shire, the actual supervision exercised from the centre was in practice slight. Above the sheriff was the Ealdorman who controlled a group 'of shires, often corresponding roughly to one of the old kingdoms. While the sheriff remained an official and later became the main Кпи 'in the state organization, the Ealdorman, like the Count or Duke of European countries, soon became a semi-independent territorial magnate. The powers of the Ealdorman greatly increased during the short period of Canute's Empire, when England was only a part of a much larger whole. This increase 'of power coincided with the adoption of the Danish title of Earl.
3. In the sphere of justice, also, great strides were made in the 'direction of feudalism by way of the delegation of royal rights to powerful individuals. The old system of shire, hundred and township courts worked fairly well only as long as no landowner in the area was so powerful as to be able to oppose their decisions. With the advent of powerful semi-feudal lords the authority of the traditional courts was weakened, and they were supplemented and in part superseded by the granting to these same lords of the right to hold courts of their own. Such rights were eagerly sought, for the income produced by fines. Private courts of justice always among the most definite marks of feudalism, were well established in England by the time of the Norman Conquest
4. The other thing which is characteristic of the manor, a servile peasantry, was also now the rule except in the Dane law. The Danish invasions had indeed a curious dual result. In the Dane law itself the enserfment of the cultivator was retarded while in the Saxon half of England it' was accelerated. The evidence of the "Colloquies of Aelfric", a series of dialogues written as a text-book for the boys in the monastic school at Winchester some time before 1000, is striking with its assumption that the typical cultivator was unfree.
5. The terms freeman and serf are puzzling to the modern mind, since they are used in a peculiar sense in the Feudal Age. They can only be understood with reference to the holding of land. A man without land was neither free nor unfree, he did not count. A free man was one who held land on condition of military service, or of some other service reckoned honorable, or one who paid a money rent. The serf or villein was he who held land on condition of performing agricultural labor on his lord's land. He was bound to the soil, whereas the freeman could leave his land and go elsewhere or even in some cases take his land, as the saying went, and commend himself to another lord. In a time when to be landless was the worst of all misfortunes it was not so terrible a thing to be bound to the soil as it might seem today. The serf had his own rights, precisely defined by custom even where not legally enforceable. One of the results of the Norman Conquest was to draw the line between serf and freeman - a very vague line in Saxon England - higher up in the social scale and to reduce everyone below this line to a dead level of servitude.
6. Late in the Tenth Century the Danish invasions were renewed under Sweyn, who had managed to unite Denmark and Norway under his rule. The intervening period had been largely filled with inroads on Northern France, but with the establishment of a strong Scandinavian principality in Normandy the centre of attack shifted. The wealth and degeneration of England, of which the Danes must have been well aware, made it once more the most profitable objective.
7. The conquest of England by the Normans can be regarded both as the last of the hostings of the Northmen and the first of the crusades. Though William was a feudal prince, his army was not a feudal army but one gathered from all quarters by the promise of land and plunder. He safeguarded himself with an elaborate chain of alliances, including one with the Pope that formed the basis for many later claims and disputes. His army was not large - perhaps about 12,000 - but was trained in methods of warfare unknown in England. The English had learnt from the Danes to use horses to move swiftly from place to place, but continued to fight on foot in a dense mass behind the traditional shield wall. Their principal weapon was the axe. The Normans employed a skillful combination of heavy armored cavalry and crossbowmen which enabled them to break up the ranks of their opponents from a distance before pushing home a decisive charge. Once the shield wall was broken, the effectiveness of the cavalry in pursuit made recovery out of the question. This was the military reason for William's victory, just as the political reason was his firm control over his vassals as compared with the defiant attitude adopted by the Earls of Marcia and North Umbria towards Harold.
8. The completion of the conquest was followed by a fresh confiscation of lands and a new division among the Normans. Within a few years the whole of the land of the country passed out of the hands of its old owners and into the hands of the Conqueror.
9. The essential political feature of feudalism was the downward delegation of power, and all power was based upon the ownership of land. The King was the sole and ultimate owner of all the land, and granted it to his tenants-in-chief in return for military and other services and for the payment of certain customary dues. With the land was granted also political right of governing its cultivators: the right to hold courts of justice, to levy taxes and to exact services. So far as the King was concerned the most important duty of his vassals was to follow him in the war and so the whole country was divided up into areas, known as Knight's fees, corresponding roughly to the older thane holdings, each of which was bound to provide and equip one heavy armed cavalryman for the army.
10. Just because England was conquered within a few years and the political institutions of feudalism deliberately imposed from above, the system here reached a higher regularity and completeness than in most other countries. Elsewhere the King's ownership of all the land was a fiction. Here it was a fact, and the King granted land to his vassals on his own terms, terms extremely favorable to himself.
11. Feudalism was always in theory a contract between king and vassal, but in England this contract was more a reality than it was elsewhere.
12. The very completeness with which feudalism was imposed in England created immediately the possibility of a state organization transcending the feudal system. This State organization was built around William's power as the military leader of a victorious army and around the pre-Conquest shire organization of the Saxons. William was able to grant land to his followers in scattered holdings. He was, in fact, forced to do this, since the country was conquered piecemeal, and as each new era came under control he granted what his followers regarded as an installment of the reward that was dew to them. For this reason there was no baron in England, however much land he might hold in all, who was able to concentrate very large forces in any one area. Further, the Crown retained enough land in its own possessions to ensure that the King was far stronger than any baron or any likely combination of barons. Apart from his hundreds of manors, William claimed all the forest lands, estimated at the time to comprise one-third of the country. Probably he sensed the huge possibilities of development in these still unexploited tracts.
13. With the exception of Chester and Shrewsbury, which were border earldoms planned to hold the Welsh in check, and the County of Durham under its Prince Bishop which served the same purpose against the Scots, no great principalities whose holders might become semi-independent princes as many of the French feudal nobles had done, were allowed to arise in England; consequently, the sheriff, the representative of the central government in each country, remained stronger than any baron in his territory. And, since it was not necessary to strengthen the sheriffs unduly to enable them to control the local nobility, there was no danger of the sheriffs in their turn making themselves independent of the Crown..
14. England had, therefore, a development that was uniqueinEuropean history. From the start the power of the State was greater and the power of the feudal nobility less. Private war between nobles was the exception rather than the rule, and private armies and castles were jealously watched by the Crown and prohibited as far as possible. The agents of the Crown were certainly oppressive, and the exploitation of the villain masses was severe. But these exactions of the Crown were to some extent fixed and regular, and a limit was set to the much more oppressive exactions of the feudal lords.
15. The century and 9 half between the Conquest and Magna Charta was the period during which feudalism existed in its most complete form in England. Yet it would be a mistake to imagine that at any time during these years things stood still. The common conception of the middle Ages as a period of stability, or of barely perceptible change, is very wide of the mark, for not only every century but each successive generation had its specific characteristics, its important departures and developments. It is quite impossible to put one's finger on any date and to say, "At this moment feudalism in England exists perfectly and completely".
16. Throughout the period there was a constant struggle between the centralizing power of the Crown and the feudal tendency towards regionalism. While the main trend was always towards increasing central authority, this authority developed within the frame work of feudal institutions which limited and conditioned it. Some of the forces at work were general forces common to all Europe; others sprang from the special conditions created by the survival of pre-feudal Saxon institutions, and others again from the geographical situation of the country. (From: A people’s History of England A.L.Morton.NY.,1968.P.52-63).
Task 13. Write a composition on a topic given bellow:
1. William’ reforms in England.
2. The influence of the Norman Conquest upon England.
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