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in the Norman French style. It was a statement of supremacy in stone.

Norman French replaced English as the language of the Court and of government for nearly 300 years. Many French words entered the English language and spelling underwent change as French speaking scribes struggled to make sense of English sounds. However, experts now agree (*1)that the change in the English language from 'word endings to word order' was well under way long before the arrival of the Normans. The tendency to put emphasis on the first syllable of a word is evident from the earliest days of English settlement. This made the ends of words less easy to hear and concern over case endings and gender distinctions lessened. The settlement of eastern England by the Danes accelerated the process. By 1066 word order had already become established as the key characteristic of English and it was the dialect of the east Midlands where Danes and English intermingled which was to be the ancestor of Middle and Modern English.

The Norman success at Hastings altered England's political, cultural and trade orientation from Scandinavia to Continental Europe. A more transparent system of land tenure in return for military service was imposed in England. The relationship between King and 'People' underwent a subtle but significant change. Anglo-Saxon Kings had styled themselves 'King of the English'. William and later Kings were King of England. William had won the country and disposed of it as he saw fit. It is tempting to see here the seeds of the idea that the King is above the Law and can do as he pleases, regardless of the 'common good'. Such an idea was alien to the English tradition, which periodically seems to resurface 'in extremis', as with Magna Carta in 1215 and the Civil War in 1642.

Another change involved the gradual adoption of the custom of primogeniture to identify an English King's successor. This was a Continental, not an English, custom. The English custom was to choose the most suitable candidate who was of Royal blood. The Witan, leading churchmen and nobles, had to make the decision. Often brothers not sons had been chosen. The House of Wessex had come to dominate over other English Royal Houses in the course of the ninth and tenth centuries, but Canute was of Danish blood and so, partly, was Harold II, whose mother Gytha was great grand daughter of Harold Bluetooth, who had been King of Denmark and Norway. Harold was accepted as King in January 1066 in preference to Edgar the Aetheling, a descendant of the House of Wessex. Neither Canute nor Harold, therefore, nor William, can be considered a usurper according to English custom. Primogeniture was to set several fools and weaklings on the English throne; it may yet do so again, for it remains the custom in Britain today.

It took several generations before intermarriage eventually blurred the distinction between Norman and English in England. Eventually, the Normans were absorbed into the mix we know today as English. Unlike the Celts, the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes, the Normans were so few that no trace of them can be discerned in the DNA of modern English people. They were, in any case, largely of Scandinavian ancestry themselves. Those few among the English today who boast that an ancestor, 'came over with the Conqueror', are merely revealing themselves as 'Johnny come latelies'!

*1 The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, David Crystal, Cambridge University
Press 1995, pages 32-41 especially.

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