From the exploration (undertaken in the three preceding chs.) of the historical and intellectual milieu in which the Benedictine Rule, the Royal Psalter and the Aldhelm glosses originated, let us return one last time to the study of words. In this concluding ch., we shall focus our attention on some loanwords, semantic loans and loan formations from French and German, and we shall inspect in what way such loans may reflect an impact of the many foreigners who were attracted to King Æthelstan's court, and whether, possibly, these loans reveal traces of the activities of the foreign scholars who pursued their studies there.

Contacts between the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms or the English church and the Continent had been numerous before the reign of Æthelstan. Yet in the tenth century (and perhaps throughout Anglo-Saxon England), Æthelstan's court culture marked the acme of such contacts in its readiness to absorb and assimilate both secular and clerical influence emanating from Francia and Germany. We are moderately well informed as regards the agencies through which such influence reached Æthelstan's court. The links with the Continent have been explored as far as they can still be recovered; their story need not be rehearsed here.