: I really really don't want to get into this but I have to snicker at this sentence. In England for most of the middle ages, this situation didn't exist. The lowest classes were the ones most likely to speak English, the clerics and nobles favored French (after c. 1066) or Latin! There were a number of English kings who probably couldn't speak a word of English. But this points out the problem: very few descriptions of medievality would be accurate! Perhaps Aelmer is just pointing this out.

Then again within a couple generations of the Norman conquest it is recorded that English was the mother tongue of some at least of the immigrant aristocracy, who had to learn French as a second language.

It is recorded that in a moment of feigned fear (it was a set-up) one female member of the Norman nobility shouted to her husband "Ware-ware! Hugh de Morley, Lithulf haeth his swerd adrege!" Hugh look out! Lithulf has drawn his sword! All in English.

The saintly monk Aelmer of Rievaulx (Norman father, English mother) who was active in the period just after the conquest, is recorded as saying "Crist-Luv" as his dying words "Christ's Love" in English, the hagiographers writing his history went to some pains to apologise for their hero's lapse from using respectable Latin at this point!