There had been small-scale immigration from Britain since the 12th century, after the Anglo-Norman invasion, creating an Anglo-Norman, English, Welsh and Flemish community in Ireland, under the Crown of England. By the 15th century, English control had shrunk to an area called The English Pale where 'The Palesmen were highly sensitive to their English identity, because to be English was to be free and civilised, whereas Irishness was synonymous with servitude and savagery'. By the Tudor period, however, the Irish culture and language had regained most of the territory initially lost to the Anglo-Normans: "even in the Pale, all the common folk ... for the most part are of Irish birth, Irish habit and of Irish language". At a higher social level, there was extensive intermarriage between the Gaelic Irish aristocracy and Anglo-Norman lords. The towns of the east coast, and Galway and Limerick on the west, spoke the English language. In County Wexford, English developed into the now extinct dialect of Yola. Elsewhere outside of the Pale, the 'Old English' had integrated into Irish society. Edmund Spenser wrote of the "old English": "they are more sharpely to be chastised and reformed … for they are more stubborne, and disobedient to the law and government, than the Irish".