For John Cornwal, a master of grammar, changed the lore in grammar school and construing of French into English; and Richard Pencrych learned this manner of teaching of him, as other men did of Pencrych.

So that now, the year of our Lord 1385 and of the second King Richard after the Conquest nine, in all the grammar schools of England children leaveth French, and construeth and learneth in English.

Also gentlemen have now much left for to teach their children French." [Sidenote: Chaucer] This drift towards a general use of the national tongue told powerfully on literature.

The influence of the French romances everywhere tended to make French the one literary language at the opening of the fourteenth century, and in England this influence had been backed by the French tone of the court of Henry the Third and the three Edwards.

But at the close of the reign of Edward the Third the long French romances needed to be translated even for knightly hearers.