Literature in England began to be once more
English and truly national in the hands of Chaucer and his
contemporaries, but it was the literature of a nation cut off from its
own past by three centuries of foreign rule.
The most noteworthy English document of the 11th and 12th centuries was
the continuation of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle. Copies of these annals,
differing somewhat among themselves, had been kept at the monasteries in
Winchester, Abingdon, Worcester, and elsewhere. The yearly entries are
mostly brief, dry records of passing events, though occasionally they
become full and animated. The fen country of Cambridge and Lincolnshire
was a region of monasteries. Here were the great abbeys of Peterborough
and Croyland and Ely minster. One of the earliest English songs tells
how the savage heart of the Danish king Cnut was softened by the singing
of the monks in Ely.
Merie sungen muneches binnen Ely
Tha Cnut chyning reu ther by;
Roweth, cnihtes, noer the land.
And here we thes muneches sang.
Merrily sung the monks in Ely
When King Canute rowed by.
'Row boys, nearer the land,
And let us hear these monks' song.'
It was among the dikes and marshes of this fen country that the bold
outlaw Hereward, "the last of the English," held out for some years
against the conqueror.
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