CHAPTER III. 



MODERN HISTORY OF THE OYSTER. 



FALL OF THE RUTUPIAN SUPREMACY LOUIS IV. AND WILLIAM 

 OF NORMANDY CONQUEST OF ENGLAND, AND REVIVAL OF 

 OYSTER-EATING IN ENGLAND WALLFLEET OYSTERS ANCIENT 

 CRIES OF LONDON OYSTERS IN THE MIDDLE AGES. BISHOP 

 SPRATT. THE POET COWPER ON OYSTERS. 



WITH the fall of the Roman Empire came also the fall of 

 the Rutupian supremacy ; and even the Roman Britons, 



i 



driven into Brittany and the mountains of Wales by their 

 truculent Saxon persecutors, had to forego these luxuries 

 of the table, unless, perhaps, Prince Arthur and his Knights 

 may now and then have opened a bushel, when they were 

 seated over their wine, in that free and easy circle which 

 has become so celebrated as to have formed a literature of 

 its own. (a} 



Sharon Turner, in his " History of the Anglo-Saxons 

 from the Earliest Period to the Norman Conquest," tells 

 us that in the dialogues composed by Elfric to instruct the 

 Anglo-Saxon youths in the Latin language, which are yet 

 preserved to us in the MSS. in the Cotton Library, there 



(a) The Oyster, &c. 



