93. Changing Conditions after 1200. How long the linguistic
situation just described would have continued if the conditions
under which it arose had remained undisturbed it is impossible to
say. As long as England held her continental territory and the
nobility of England were united to the continent by ties of prop-
erty and kindred a real reason existed for the continued use of
French among the governing class in the island. If the English
had permanently retained control over the two thirds of France
that they once held, French might have remained permanently in
use in England. But shortly after 1200 conditions changed.
England lost an important part of her possessions abroad. The
nobility gradually relinquished their continental estates. A feeling
of rivalry developed between the two countries, accompanied by
an antiforeign movement in England and culminating in the
Hundred Years' War. During the century and a half following the
Norman Conquest, French had been not only natural but more
or less necessary to the English upper class; in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries its maintenance became increasingly arti-
ficial. For a time certain new factors helped it to hold its ground,
socially and officially. Meanwhile, however, social and economic
changes affecting the English-speaking part of the population
were taking place, and in the end numbers told. In the fourteenth
century English won its way back into universal use, and in the

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