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Nationality and Language in Medieval England1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

V. H. Galbraith
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Extract

A nation may be defined as any considerable group of people who believe they are one; and their nationalism as the state of mind which sustains this belief. Broadly speaking, the sentiment of nationality is much the same in quality at all times and in all places. Its minimum content is love, or at least awareness, of one's country, and pride in its past achievements, real or fictitious; and it springs from attachment to the known and familiar, stimulated by the perception of difference–difference of habits and customs, often too of speech, from those of neighbouring peoples. The historical evidence for the existence of this positive sentiment in early times is largely inferential, a mere deduction from the struggles and mutual hatreds of tribes perpetually at war. But by the tenth or eleventh century there is evidence that medieval man was faintly stirred by the same sort of national impulses as we are, though he felt them in very different circumstances, in a different degree and, often, in relation to other objects. By the thirteenth century the fully developed medieval state had reached a momentary equilibrium, and if it was still “feudal”, it was also, in its way, a national state. Then as now, nationality was in general, though not necessarily, coterminous with a vernacular.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 23 , December 1941 , pp. 113 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1941

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References

page 113 note 2 I would like to thank Professor J. Dover Wilson, and Mr. R. W. Southern of Balliol College for substantial help and criticism. Medieval English nationalism has been discussed by T. F. Tout, France and England: their relations in the Middle Ages and now, Lecture I; and Coulton, G. G., “Nationalism in the Middle Ages,” Cambridge Historical Journal, vol. v., No. I, 1935Google Scholar. Dr. Coulton paints a gloomy picture of Europe rent by national discords in the monasteries and universities and among the Crusaders. But he hardly touches the positive national feeling of the medieval state.

page 114 note 1 Cf. the judicious summary in Fawtier, R., Europe Occidentale de 1270 a 1328, Histoire Générale (1940), ed. Glotz, Google Scholar.

page 114 note 2 The complex background of medieval nationalism is well brought out in Wilson, R. M., Early Middle English Literature (1939)Google Scholar.

page 114 note 3 Tout, op. cit., 9.

page 114 note 4 By the time of the Crusades nearly all the European nations were clearly distinguished. Cf. William of Malmesbury's description of the Crusaders: “The Welshman abandoned his forest hunting, the Scot (or Irishman) his familiarity with fleas, the Dane his constant drinking, and the Norwegian his raw fish.” Gesta Regum (R. S.), ii. 399Google Scholar, quoted by Coulton, p. 18.

page 115 note 1 F. M. Stenton, The Danes in England.

page 115 note 2 Tout, op. cit., 10.

page 116 note 1 Ireland and Wales were largely left to private enterprise. The northern counties are not included in Domesday Book; the Scottish problem was not really tackled till the time of Edward I.

page 116 note 2 The mixed character of kingship is brought out by Fawtier, op. cit., pp. 61–4.

page 117 note 1 Tout, op. cit., p. 7.

page 117 note 2 N.E.D.

page 117 note 3 Cf. Barfield, Owen, Poetic Diction, pp. 69 and 70Google Scholar (quoting Macaulay), “Nations like individuals first perceive and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilised people is practical.”

page 118 note 1 On the continuity of English prose (E.E.T.S. 1932), pp. lviii, lxxvii, lxxxiiGoogle Scholar.

page 119 note 1 Sisam, K., Review of English Studies, vol. viii. no. 29 (01 1932), p. 5, n. 3, and p. 8Google Scholar.

page 119 note 2 This is perhaps an understatement. Cf. Battle of Maldon (Ashdown, M., translation, p. 25)Google Scholar: “Say … that there stands here with his troup an earl of unstained renown, who is ready to guard this realm, the home of Ethelred my lord, people and land.” I owe this reference to Dr. O. K. Schram.

page 119 note 3 Cf. Lot, Ferdinand, “A quelle époque a-t-on cessé de parler Latin,” Bulletin Ducange, 1931 (i), p. 150Google Scholar.

page 120 note 1 Cf. Pollard, A. F., History of England (Home University Library)Google Scholar.

page 120 note 2 Stubbs, , Select Charters, p. 109Google Scholar: the English rally to the side of William II.

page 121 note 1 Norman Conquest, v. (1876), p. 507Google Scholar.

page 121 note 2 Stubbs, , Select Charters, p. 480Google Scholar; from the summons of the archbishop to the parliament of 1295: [Rex Franciae] … linguam Anglicam, si conceptae iniquitatis proposito detestabili potestas correspondeat, quod Deus avertat, omnino de terra delere proponit.

page 121 note 3 The Pseudo-Ingulf, quoted by Freeman above.

page 121 note 4 Cf. Select Charters, p. 112. Stubbs points out that Henry I is recognised in the Chronicles as the Lion of Justice or Righteousness of Merlin's prophecy.

page 122 note 1 The great exception is, of course, the Anglo-Saxon chronicle or chronicles. Professor Chambers (lxiii) calls attention to some remarkable passages which show how hateful foreigners were just before the Conquest to the northern as well as to the southern English. There is a danger of exaggerating the importance of these entries just because they are written in English: actually they have precisely the same force as the Latin strictures of Matthew Paris on the alienigenae of Henry III's reign. The protest against genuine exploitation by foreign favourites who have gained the ear of feeble monarchs is perennial in history. More extraordinary is the fact that the vernacular chronicle only stops at the time when the fusion of the two races was being completed. The favourable verdicts of the English chronicler on William I and Henry I are destructive of any theory of a vernacular protest against foreign conquest.

page 122 note 2 E.g. he says of the people of Canterbury, “plusquam ceteri Angli conscientiam adhuc antiquae nobilitatis spirans” (Gesta Pontificum, p. 3)Google Scholar. Cf. the description of Thomas archbishop of York as “novus Anglus” in the Vita Wulfstani, p. 24Google Scholar.

page 123 note 1 Dialogi Laurentii Dunelmensis, ed. Raine, J. (Surtees Soc., vol. 70 [1880]), p. 75Google Scholar, written about 1144. Cf. p. 2 the lines beginning, “Anglia terra ferax”, or p. 3, “Quod patriae fles damna tuae,” etc. How completely the clerical attitude to England had changed since the first generation after the Conquest will be seen by the examples given in Coulton, op. cit., p. 24.

page 123 note 2 The Sicilian Norman kingdom in the mind, of Anglo-Norman contemporaries (British Academy), p. 42Google Scholar.

page 123 note 3 Chronicles of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I. R.S., iii, p. 186. Ailred of Rivaulx was born about 1110 and died in 1167. Mr. Southern points out that by a curious coincidence, this Walter Espec, with all his talk of the Normans, has a place in the writing of the new history of England. He had a copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth which he lent to Ralf Fitz Gilbert, who passed it on to his wife for the use of Geoffrey Gaimar. Gaimar not only translated it, or some of it, into the vernacular (French), but he linked it up with the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, “E del estorie de Wincestre, Fust amende ceste geste”, and with the history of the Norman kings. Thus while the Anglo-Saxon chronicle was still being written, there was a new vernacular history with the complete chain, Britons, Anglo-Saxons, Normans.

page 124 note 1 Select Charters, p. 219, from the Dialogus de Scaccario: “sic permixtae sunt nationes ut vix decerni possit hodie, de liberis loquor, quis Anglicus quis Normannus sit genere”. Cf. Stubbs, , Const. Hist., i. 586Google Scholar. Henry II's descent from the old royal house helped to reconcile him to the English, and he is greeted by Ailred of Rivaulx, himself an Englishman, as “the corner stone which bound together the two walls of the English and the Norman race”. See Powicke, , “Ailred of Rivaulx”, J. R. L. Bulletin, vol. vi. (1921–1922), p. 349Google Scholar.

page 124 note 2 Orr, J., French the third classic, p. 11Google Scholar.

page 125 note 1 Chambers, and Daunt, , London English (1931), p. 139Google Scholar. Many examples could be quoted, e.g. The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye (1436), ed. Warner, (1926), pp. xvii–xixGoogle Scholar. Cf. the lines beginning “kepe then the See, that is the wall of England” (1. 1096), which the editor aptly compares (p. xxxvii) with the lines of Richard II quoted below.

page 126 note 1 Richard II, ii. 1. 45.

page 126 note 2 Renwick, W. L., Edmund Spenser (1925), p. 18 [Elementarie, p. 254]Google Scholar.

page 127 note 1 Dante, , Convivio (Temple Classics), p. 54Google Scholar.

page 128 note 1 John Barbour (ob. 1395).