Note U3 — APPENDIX I. AN ESSAY ON THE ANCIENT MINSTRELS IN ENGLAND.
Reading edition
[Both the Norman and English languages would be heard at the houses of the great.] A remarkable proof of this is that the most diligent inquirers after ancient English rhimes find the earliest they can discover in the mouths of the Norman nobles, such as that of Robert, Earl of Leicester, and his Flemings in 1173, temp. Hen. II. (little more than a century after the Conquest), recorded by Lambarde in his Dictionary of England, p. 36: