creeked so rudely, that they of the south could understand nothing of it, which happened on account of the vicinity of barbarous nations,* and the remoteness of the kings, formerly English, then Norman, "who are known," he says, "to sojourn more to the south than to the north."† Girald Barry, too, who resided frequently at the court of King Henry II., says of the vulgar English idiom of his own time: "As in the southern borders of England, and especially about Devonshire, the English language seems, at this day, rather discomposed, it nevertheless, scenting far more of antiquity (the northern parts by the frequent irruptions of the Danes and Norwegians, being greatly corrupted), observes more the propriety and ancient mode of speaking; of which also not argument only, but likewise certainty, you may have that all the English books of Bede, Rabanus, King Alfred, or others whomsoever you will find written under the propriety of this idiom."‡ This seems to describe the Saxon into which Alfred translated Bede's Ecclesiastical History, and many other Latin books. "This apayring of the birthe tonge," says Higden, "is by cause of tweye thinges; oon is for children in scole, ayenes the usage and maner of alle other naceouns, beth compelled for to leve her owne langage, and for to constrewe her lessouns and her thingis a Frensche, and havith siththe that the Normans come first into England. Allso gentilmennes children beth ytaught for to speke Frensche, from the tyme that they beth rokked in her cradel, and kunneth speke, and playe with a childes brooche. And uplondishmen wole likne hemself to gentilmen, and fondeth with grete bisynesse for to speke Frensche, for to be the more ytold of."§ Trevisa, the translator, in his addition to this passage, allows that though “this maner was mych yused to fore the first moreyn,” it was "siththe som del ychaunged. So that now," he says, "the yere of our lord a thousand thre hundrd four score and fyve, in all the gramer scoles of Englond, children leveth French, and construeth and lerneth an Englisch." King Richard is never known to have uttered a single word of English, unless one may rely on the evidence of Robert Mannyne for the express words when of Isaac, King of Cyprus, "O dele," said the king, "this is a fole Breton." The latter expression seems proverbial, whether it allude to the Welsh or to the Armoricans; because Isaac was neither by birth, though he might be both by folly. Many great nobles of England in this century were utterly * 258. The Picts and the Scots. Girald, Cambriæ discriptio, c. 6. He means pure Saxon, and not the jargon of his own time. § Tyrwhitt's Chaucer, iv., 22. | Ibid, iv., 23. ignorant of the English language. A remarkable instance is related by Brompton, of William, Bishop of Ely, chancellor, chief justiciary, and prime minister, to Richard, and certainly at one time the greatest, at another the least, in the kingdom, who did not know a word of it.* "Our nation," say King John's ambassadors to King Admiral of Morocco, "is learned in three idioms, that is to say, Latin, French, and English." There is no specimen of the English language in this reign. It must, however, have been making its progress, as in the reign of his son and successor, Henry III., we find it, to a certain degree, mature and perfect. This, if we take the year 1188, the penultimate of Henry II., when the work of I ayamon may be thought to have been finished (the manuscript itself being of a not much later date), and the year 1278, when Robert of Gloucester completed his rhyming chronicle, no more than a single century, you find an entirely different appearance, with a considerable degree of rough energy, and a tolerably smooth and accurate metre, for the time, though it is generally thought to be conceived in a provincial dialect, and, in that case, may afford a far from favourable specimen of the English even at that time. The King of England still adhered to the Norman-French, as far as one may rely upon Robert of Brunne, a good evidence in general, and who had the opportunity, in this instance, of knowing his authors' precise meaning, they residing only at a short distance from each other: "The kyng said on hie, Symon, jeo vous defie!'" We never know him to speak a word of English. The last long expiring efforts of the Saxon language were made in the forty-third year of this * A specimen of English poetry, apparently of the same age, is preserved by Benedict, Abbot of Peterborough (622), Roger de Hoveden (678), and in the manuscript chronicle of Lanercost. "In this year (1190)," says the former, "was fulfilled that prophecy, which of old was found written in stone tables, near the town of the King of England, which is called Here; which Henry (the Second), King of England, had given to Randal (? William) FitzStephen, in which the same Randal (William) built a new house, in the pinnacle whereof he placed the effigy of a hart, which is believed to have been done that this prophecy might be fulfilled, in which it is said "Whan thu sees in Here hert yreret, That other into Puille mid prude bileve, The thridde into Airhahen herd all wreken drechegen." As the inscription was set up when the house was built, before the death of Henry II., in 1189, it may be regarded as a very ancient and singular specimen of the English language, which had not yet, it would seem, at least universally, adopted rhyme to what is called poetry, though the example of St. Godric, already mentioned, will serve to prove that it was not altogether disused even at so early a period (see Bibliotheca Poetica, 1802). †M. Paris, 204. reign (1258-9), in the shape of a writ to his subjects in Huntingdonshire, and, as it is there said, to every other in the kingdom, in support of the Oxford provisions. Certain it is, that this once famous language had already become obsolete, and utterly incapable of discharging its functions, being no longer either written or spoken: and " there," as the worthy Lord Balcarres expressed himself, at the close of his final speech on the dissolution of the Scotch Parliament, "is the end of an auld sang." King Edward I. generally, or, according to Andrew of Wyntoun,* constantly, spoke the French language, both in the council and in the field, many of his sayings in that idiom being recorded by our old historians. When in the council at Norham, in 1291-2, Anthony Beck had, as it is said, proved to the king, by reason and eloquence, that Bruce was too dangerous a neighbour to be King of Scotland, his Majesty replied, “Par le sang de Dieu vouz aves bien eschanté ;" and accordingly adjudged the crown to Balliol; of whom, refusing to obey his summons, he afterwards said, "A ce fol felon tel folie fais! S'il ne voult venir à nous nous viendrons à lui."† There is but one instance of his speaking English, which was when the great sultan sent ambassadors, after his assassination, to protest that he had no knowledge of it. These, standing at a distance, adored the king, prone on the ground; and Edward said in English ("in Anglico"), "You indeed adore, but you little love me;" nor understood they his words, because they spoke to him by an interpreter.‡ King Edward II., likewise, who married a French princess, used himself the French tongue. Sir Henry Spelman had a manuscript, in which was a piece of poetry, entitled, "De le roi Edward le fiz roi Edward, le chanson qu'il fist mesmes," which Lord Orford was unacquainted with. His son, Edward III., always wrote his letters or despatches in French, as we find them preserved by Robert of Avesbury; and in the early part of his reign (1328), even the Oxford scholars were confined in conversation to Latin or French.§ That speech, however, soon afterwards began to decline. In the thirty-sixth year of his reign (1362), an Act was made, the preamble whereof states, "For this that it is oftentimes shewed to the king, by the prelates, dukes, earls, barons, and all the commonalty, the great mischiefs which are come to many of the realm, for this that the laws, customs, and statutes of the realm are not commonly known in the same realm, because that they are pleaded, shown, and judged in the French language, which is too much unknown in the said realm, so that the persons who plead, or are impleaded in the courts of the king, and the *See ii., 46, 76, 83, 97. + Scoti Chronicon, ii., 147, 156. § Warton, i., 6, n. 6. courts of others, have not understanding nor knowledge of that which is said for them, nor against them, by their serjeants and other pleaders, etc., ordains that all pleas, which shall be to plead in his courts, be pleaded in the English language, and that they be entered and enrolled in Latin ;" which was not much better understood, it is presumed, by the suitors than the French. This famous statute, at the same time, is itself in French, which, in fact, continued in use till the time of King Richard III.; and if the serjeants and lawyers ceased to plead in that tongue, they certainly continued to write their year books, reports, abridgements, and summaries, in the same even so late as the last century, in which Chief Baron Comyns compiled his Digest. It likewise continued to be used in the mootings of the inns of court till a still later period, though it was certainly punishable to pronounce it properly.* There is a single instance preserved of this monarch's use of the English language. He appeared, in 1349, in a tournament at Canterbury, with a white swan for his impress, and the following motto embroidered on his shield: Lewis Beaumont, Bishop of Durham, 1317, understood not a word of either Latin or English. In reading the bull of his appointment, which he had been taught to spell for several days before, he stumbled upon the word metropoliticè, which he in vain endeavoured to pronounce; and having hammered over it a considerable time, at last cried out in his mother-tongue, "Seit pour dite! Par seynt Lowys, il ne fu pas curteis qui ceste parole ici escrit.” ‡ Gower wrote much more in French and Latin than in English; his Speculum meditantis is in the first of those languages; his Vox clamantis in the second; and his Confessio amantis, though in the third, a manifest version from both. He even inserts pure French words in his English poetry; for instance : "To ben upon his bien venu, The first whiche shall him salu" (Fo. 35, b). "The dare not drede tant ne quant" (Fo. 41, etc.) This, too, was the case with Chaucer, though disputed by Mister * Barrington's Observations on the Statutes, 63, n. (u). † See Warton's History of English Poetry, i., 251. He had another, "It is as it is;" and may have had a third, "Ha St. Edward! Ha St. George!" Robert de Graystanes, Anglia sacra, i., 761: "Take it as said! By St. Lewis, he was not very civil who wrote this word here." The country schoolmasters in certain small villages of the north have recourse to a similar evasion when any of their little pupils are staggered at a difficult word: "It is a yowth," says Holofernes; " pass it over." Tyrwhitt,* who, however, allows in another place that "our poets (who have, generally, the principal share in modelling a language) found it their interest to borrow as many words as they conveniently could from France, etc., etc. ;"'* which is certainly as true of Chaucer as of Gower or any other poet; more especially in their translations, where, from a want of words, they take the French as they find it. A striking proof of this fact, in the case of both Gower and Chaucer, is that they adopted the mode of French poetry, which ends one subject or sentence with half the rhyme, and begins a new one with the other half; which few, if any, other English poets are, at least constantly, known to do. Nothing is more plausible than Warton's opinion that Chaucer imitated the Provençal poets; His Dreme, The Flower and the Leaf, The Assemblé of Ladies, The House of Fame, and, it may be, others, are very much in the manner of the troubadours; even the Roman de la rose is, apparently, an imitation of this kind; which peradventure might rather set him upon the translation. At any rate, the English language, such as it is, or is esteemed to be, was by these means greatly enlarged, as well as improved, in this reign, particularly by those two poets, not forgetting Robert of Brunne, to whom Warton has done great injustice, and Lawrence Minot, whose merit he was a stranger to. The first instance of the English language which Mister Tyrwhitt had discovered in the parliamentary proceedings was the Confession of Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, in 1398.† He might, however, have met with a petition of the mercers of London ten years earlier.‡ The oldest English instrument, produced by Rymer, is dated 1368; § but an indenture in the same idiom, betwixt the Abbot and convent of Whitby and Robert the son of John Bustard, dated at York in 1343, is the earliest known; the date of 1324, given in Whatley's translation of Rapin's Acta regia (vol. i., page 394) being either a falsification or a blunder for 1384, as appears by the Fœdera, whence it was taken. There is every reason, indeed, to believe that the English language, before the invention of printing, was held by learned or literary men in very little esteem. In the library of Glastonbury Abbey, which bids fair to have been one of the most extensive in the kingdom, in 1248 there were but four books in English, and those upon religious subjects, all beside “vetusta et inutilia." ¶ We have not a single historian in English prose before the reign of Richard II., * See his edition of The Canterbury Tales, IV., i., etc., 45. |