The History of the Anglo-Saxons

The Anglo-Saxons were not a separate people subsequent to the reign of William II. The great national distinctions betwixt them and their conquerors continued down to Edward III. Still however the necessary intercourse between the lords of the soil and those oppressed inferior beings by whom that soil was cultivated occasioned the gradual formation of a dialect compounded between the French and the Anglo-Saxon. And from this necessity arose by degrees the structure of our present English language in which the speech of the victors and the vanquished have been so happily blended together.