patronage of the king. He being no longer in wholesome fear of Parliament, for the Commons were as yet weak and timid, did pretty much as he pleased, and became insufferably oppressive and tyrannical j raising taxes, for instance, without the consent of Parliament, and imprisoning and executing persons without due process of law. For the hundred years following the Wars of the Roses the government of England was rather an absolute than a limited monarchy. Not until the final Revolution of the seventeenth century (see Chap. LV.) did the people, by overturning the throne of the Stuarts, fully recover their lost liberties.
Growth of the English Language and Literature.
The Language.—From the Norman Conquest to the middle of the fourteenth century there were in use in England three languages: Norman French was the speech of the conquerors and the medium of polite literature; Old English was the tongue of the common people; while Latin was the language of the laws and records, of the church services, and of the works of the learned.
Modern English is the Old English worn and improved by use, and enriched by a large infusion of Norman- French words, with less important additions from the Latin and other languages. It took the place of the Norman-French in the courts of law about the middle of the fourteenth century. At this time the language was broken up into many dialects, and the expression " King's English " is supposed to have referred to the standard form employed in state documents and in use at court.
Effect of the Norman Conqnest on English Literature.—The blow that struck down King Harold and his brave thanes on the field of Hastings silenced for the space of about a century the voice of English literature. The tongue of the conquerors became the speech of the court, the nobility, and the clergy; while the language of the despised English was, like themselves, crowded out of every place of honor. But when, after a few generations, the down-trodden race began to re-assert itself, Eng-
