It was a time in history which had such an insanely wide gap between the elite and the common folk, and when there was zero to little literacy among the common

It was a time in history which had such an insanely wide gap between the elite and the common folk, and when there was zero to little literacy among the common folk, and basically no written history of them... Yes, the aristocracy was profoundly Norman French & French influenced. But I'm willing to bet the vast majority of actual humans were speaking English -- with various levels of influence from Danish/Old Norse -- and completely unable to process French words of any kind and encountering it about 0 times in their daily lives. Even today the level of "class" and "sophistication" of an English language user is unconsciously tied to how many Latin & French origin words they toss into their speech and writing.