visitors. At Pembroke, founded by a Frenchwoman, Mary de Valence, special favour was shown to Frenchmen in the election of Fellows, provided that their total number did not exceed a quarter of the whole body.[12] The cosmopolitanism of the mediaeval centres of learning encouraged a number of such French students to come to England. In 1259, for instance, owing to the disturbed state of the University of Paris, Henry III. invited the Paris students to come to England and take up their abode wheresoever they pleased;[13] no doubt those who accepted his invitation settled at one or other of the two English universities. We also find in the Treaty of Bretigny (1360) a clause to the effect that the subjects of the French and English kings should henceforth be free to resume their intercourse and to enjoy mutually the privileges of the universities of the two countries, "comme ils povoient faire avant ces presentes guerres et comme ils font a present."[14] On the other hand, the English frequented the French universities in large numbers; at Paris in the thirteenth century they formed one of the four nations which composed the University.[15] The authors of the early Latin vocabularies, Alexander Neckam and John de Garlande, were both connected with the University of Paris, while most of the other English scholars of the period were indebted for much of their learning to the same great centre. Many, no doubt, could have written with Garlande:

In the thirteenth century French was still widely used in England. The fact that the fusion between conquerors and conquered was then complete,[17] and that at the same time French was very popular on the Continent undoubtedly helped to make its position in England stronger. It was then that the Italian Brunetto Latini wrote his Livres dou Tresor (1265), in French rather than in his native tongue, because French was "plus delitable et plus commune à toutes gens." During the same century French came to be used in correspondence on both sides of the Channel.[18] Little by little it was recognized as the most convenient medium for official uses, and the language most generally known in these sections of society which had to administer justice.[19] In the second half of the thirteenth century Robert of Gloucester complained that there was no land "that holdeth not to its kindly speech save Englonde only," admitting at the same time, however, that ignorance of French was a serious disadvantage. An idea of the extent to which the language was current in England may be gathered from the fact that in 1301 Edward I. caused letters from the Pope to be translated into French so that they might be understood by the whole army,[20] and in the previous year the author of the Miroir des Justices wrote in French as being the language "le plus entendable de la comun people." French, indeed, appears to have been used among all classes, save the very poorest;[21] some of the French literature of the time was addressed more particularly to the middle classes.[22]

Nevertheless, as the thirteenth century advanced, French began to hold its own with some difficulty. While it was in the unusual position of a vernacular gradually losing its power as such, there appeared the earliest extant treatise on the language. This, and those that followed it, were to some extent lessons in the vernacular; yet not entirely, as may be judged from the fact that they are set forth and explained in Latin, the language of all scholarship. The first work on the French language, dating from not later than the middle of the thirteenth century, is in the form of a short Latin treatise on French conjugations,[23] in which a comparison of the French with the Latin tenses is instituted.[24] As it appeared at a time when French was becoming the literary language of the law, and was being used freely in correspondence, it may have been intended mainly for the use of clerks. A treatise of considerably more importance composed towards the end of the century, appears to have had the same purpose. That he did not intend it exclusively for clerks, however, the author showed by adding rules for pronunciation, syntax and even morphology as well as for orthography. Like most of the early grammatical writings on the French language, this Orthographia Gallica is in Latin. The obscurity of many of its rules, however, called forth commentaries in French which appeared during the fourteenth century, and exceed the size of the original work. The Orthographia was a very popular work, as the number of manuscripts extant and the French commentary prove. The different copies vary considerably, and there is a striking increase in the number of rules given; from being about thirty in the earliest manuscript, they number about a hundred in the latest.[25]

It opens with a rule that when the first or middle syllable of a French word contains a short e, i must be placed before the e, as in bien, rien, etc.—a curious, fumbling attempt to explain the development of Latin free short e before nasals and oral consonants into ie. On the