The Black Death, sweeping throughout England, is believed to have carried off one-half of the total population. Historians have told the tale of the resulting emancipation of the labouring class, but we find that it has also left its mark on the education, the literature, the art, and the architecture of England.
In education, it helped greatly to bring about the revival of English in the schools. After the Norman Conquest French had gradually become the language of education: not of set purpose, for the Conqueror himself tried ineffectually to learn English. But most of the education was in the hands of the clergy, and as many Frenchmen had been put in charge of monasteries and of parochial cures, it was inevitable that French should become the language of education, and so diffuse itself generally through the educated part of the nation, both French and English. About the middle of the fourteenth century Higden, in his _Polychronicon_, states that French was still the language taught in the schools, and had been so since the Norman Conquest. In A.D. 1385 Trevisa, commenting on Higden’s statement, writes:
‘This maner was myche yused tofore the first moreyn [before the 1349 murrain], and is siththe som dele [since somewhat] ychaungide. For John Cornwaile, a maister of gramer, chaungide the lore [learning] in gramer scole and construction of [from] Frensch into Englisch, and Richard Pencriche lerned that maner teching of him, and other men of Pencriche. So that now, the yere of owre Lord a thousand thre hundred foure score and fyve, of the secunde King Rychard after the Conquest nyne, in alle the gramer scoles of England children leveth Frensch, and construeth an [in] Englisch.’
Despite the adoption of French as the language of the schools, English had survived as a colloquial language side by side with its supplanter. In the conflict between the two prestige and fashion were on the side of French, tradition and nationality on the side of English: and sooner or later the balance was bound to incline to the side of the national language. The fusion of the two had inevitably led to the corruption of each, but the corrupted French, at any rate after the loss of Normandy, had no standard of purity at hand to limit corruption, while the corrupted English was constantly purified by contact with the native tongue, and by the existence of a pre-Norman vernacular literature. National spirit, stimulated by international strife, was ripe for completing the task, that John Cornwall had begun in a single west country school; and the Black Death, by sweeping away the existing teachers and making place for others of native stock, did much to facilitate the change. The triumph of the vernacular operated a mighty revolution in our national literature, paving the way for Langland and Chaucer. Thomas Usk, in the Prologue to his _Testament of Love_, completed not later than A.D. 1387, alludes to the utter corruption of the imported French, and the Prioress in the Canterbury Tales, although she could speak French ‘ful fayre and festishly’ spoke it only