contemptuous, when they were no longer summoned merely before the king, but were convoked in full parliament, among the prelates, barons, and knights. Yet the object of their admission into this assembly, where they occupied the lowest benches, was still a simple vote of money; and the taxes demanded from them still exceeded those required from the clergy and landholders, even when the assessment was a general one. For example, when the knights granted a twentieth or fifteenth of their revenues, the grant made by the burgesses was a tenth or a seventh. This difference was

always made, whether the deputies of towns assembled separately, in the place where parliament was held, whether they were convoked in another town, or whether they assembled with the knights of the shire, elected like themselves, while the high barons received their letters of summons personally from the king. The commons, accordingly, in the fifteenth century, were by no means eager to attend parliament, and the towns themselves, far from regarding their electorial privilege as a precious right, often solicited exemption from it. The collection of the public acts of England contains many petitions to this effect, with several royal charters in favour of particular towns, maliciously constrained, say these charters, to send men to parliament.2

The business of the knights and that of the burgesses, seated in the same chamber, differed according to their origin and social condition. The field of political discussion was boundless for the former; for the latter, it was limited to questions of imposts on commerce, on imports and exports. But the extension attained in the fifteenth century by commercial and financial measures, naturally augmented the parliamentary importance of the burgesses; they acquired by degrees, in monetary matters, a greater participation in public affairs than the titled portion of the lower chamber or even than the upper house. This revolution, the result of the general progress of industry and commerce, soon produced. another; it banished from the lower chamber, called the house of the commonalty or commons, the French language, which the burgesses understood and spoke very imperfectly.

French was still, in England, at the end of the fifteenth

VOL. II.

1 Hallam, Europe in the Middle Ages.

2 Rymer, Charta Edwardi III.

сс

century, the official language of all the political bodies; the king, the bishops, judges, earls, and barons spoke it, and it was the tongue which the children of the nobles acquired from the cradle. Preserved for three centuries and a half amidst a people who spoke another tongue, the language of the English aristocracy had remained far behind the progress made, at this same period, by the French of the continent.2 There was something antiquated and incorrect about it, certain phrases peculiar to the provincial dialect of Normandy; and the manner of pronouncing it, as far as we can judge from the orthography of the old acts, greatly resembled the accent of Lower Normandy. Moreover, this accent, brought into England, had acquired in the course of time a certain tinge of Saxon pronunciation. The speech of the Anglo-Normans differed from that of Normandy, by a stronger articulation of particular syllables, and, more especially, of the final con

sonants.

One cause of the rapid decline of the French language and poetry in England, was the total separation of this country from Normandy, in consequence of the conquest of the latter by Philip Augustus. The emigration of the literary men and poets of the langue d'oui to the court of the Anglo-Norman kings, became, after this event, less easy and less frequent. No longer sustained by the example and imitation of those who came from the continent to teach them the new forms of the beau langage, the Norman poets resident in England lost, during the thirteenth century, much of their former grace and facility. The nobles and courtiers delighted in poetry, but disdaining themselves to write verse or compose books, the trouveres who sang in royal and noble halls were fain to seek pupils among the sons of the traders and inferior clergy of English origin, and speaking English in their ordinary conversation. It was naturally more or less a matter of effort with these men to express their ideas and feelings in another language than that of their infancy, and this effort at once impeded the perfection of their works, and

1 Radulph. Hygden, Polychron., apud Rer. Anglic. Script., (Gale) 210. 2 Freinshe use this gentilman,

Ac everich inglishe can.

(Introduction to the romance of Arthur and Merlin, quoted by Sir W. Scott, in his introduction to Sir Tristrem, p. 30.)

rendered them less numerous. From the end of the thirteenth century, most of those who, whether in the towns or in the cloister, felt a taste and talent for literature, sought to treat in the English language, the historical or imaginative subjects that had hitherto been only clothed in the Norman language.

A great many attempts of this kind appeared in succession during the first half of the fourteenth century. Some poets of this epoch, those chiefly who enjoyed or sought the favour of the higher classes of society, composed French verses; others, contenting themselves with the approbation of the middle classes, wrote for them in their own language; others, combining the two languages in one poem, alternated them by couplets, and sometimes even by verses. Gradually the scarcity of good French books composed in England became such, that the higher orders were obliged to obtain from France the romances or tales in verse with which they beguiled the long evenings, and the ballads which enlivened their banquets and courtly entertainments. But the war of rivalry which at the same period arose between France and England, inspiring the nobles of the two nations. with a mutual aversion, lessened for the Anglo-Normans the attraction of the literature imported from France, and constrained the gentlemen, tenaciously delicate on the point of national honour, to content themselves with the perusal of the works of native authors. Those, indeed, who resided at London, and frequented the court, were still enabled to satisfy their taste for the poetry and language of their ancestors; but the lords and knights who lived on their estates, were fain, under penalty of utter ennui, to give admission to English story-tellers and ballad-singers, hitherto disdained as only fit to amuse the burghers and villains.2

These popular writers distinguished themselves from those 1 We find an instance of this in the prologue to a political poem written in the reign of Edward II., where the French and English verses follow each other and rhyme together, thus:

"On peut faire et defaire come fait il trop souvent;

'Tis rather well ne faire therefor England is kent."

2 Mani noble I have y-seighe
That no Frenysche couth seye,
Begin I chill for her love..

On englyshe tel my tale.

who, at the same period, worked for the nobles, by an especial attachment to country people, farmers, millers, or innkeepers. The writers in the French tongue ordinarily treated this class of persons with supreme contempt, giving them no place whatever in their poetical narrations, whose persona were all individuals of high degree, powerful barons and noble dames, damoiselles and gentle knights. The English poets, on the contrary, took for the subjects of their mery tales, plebeian adventures, such as those of Piers Ploughman, and historiettes, such as those we find occupying so large a space in the works of Chaucer. Another characteristic common to nearly all these poets, is a sort of national distaste for the language of the conquest:—

66

'Right is that English, English understand,
That was born in England,"

says one of them. Chaucer, one of the greatest wits of his time, slily contrasts the polished French of the court of France, with the antiquated and incorrect Anglo-Norman dialect, in drawing a portrait of an abbess of high degree:—

"And French she spake, full fair and featously,

After the school of Stratford atte Bow;

For French of Paris was to her unknow."

Bad as it was, the French of the English nobles had, at least, the advantage of being spoken and pronounced in an uniform manner, while the new English language, composed of Norman and Saxon words, and idioms promiscuously put together, varied from one county to another, and even from town to town.3 This language, which took its commencement in England from the first years of the conquest, was successively augmented with all the French barbarisms used by the English, and all the Saxon barbarisms used by the Normans, in their endeavours to understand one another. Every person, according to his fancy or the degree of his knowledge of the two idioms, borrowed phrases from them, and arbitrarily joined together the first words that came into his head. It was a general aim with people to introduce into their conversation as much French as they could remember, by way of imitating the great, and appearing themselves dis

1 Ib.

2 Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Ranulph. Hygden, loc. sup. cit.

tinguished personages. This mania, which, according to an author of the fourteenth century, had taken possession even of the peasants, rendered it difficult to write the English of the period in a way to be generally understood. Notwithstanding the merit of his poems, Chaucer expresses a fear that the multiplicity of the provincial dialects will prevent their being appreciated, out of London, and prays God grant that his book may be understood by all who read it.2

Some years before this, a statute of Edward III. had, not ordered, as several historians say, but simply permitted causes to be pleaded in English before the civil tribunals. The constantly increasing multiplicity of commercial transactions and of suits arising out of them, had rendered this change more necessary under that reign than before, when parties to a suit, who did not understand French, were fain to remain in ignorance of the proceedings. But in the suits against gentlemen before the high court of parliament, which took cognizance of treason, or before the courts of chivalry, which decided affairs of honour, the ancient official language continued to be employed. And, further, the custom was retained in all the courts, of pronouncing sentence in French, and of drawing up the record in that language. In general, it was a habit with the lawyers, of every class, even while pleading in English, to introduce every moment French words and phrases, as Ah! sire, je vous jure; Ah! de par Dieu! A ce j'assente! and other exclamations, with which Chaucer never fails to interlard their discourse, when he introduces them in his works.

It was during the first half of the fifteenth century, that the English language, gradually coming more into favour as a literary language, ended by entirely superseding French, except with the great lords, who, ere they entirely abandoned the idiom of their ancestors, diverted themselves equally with works in both languages. The proof of the equality which the language of the commons had now attained, is furnished by the public acts, which from about the year 1400, are indifferently drawn up in French and in English. The first statute of the house of commons in the English language bears date

1 Ib.

2 Read where so thou be or elles sing

That thou beest understood God I beseech.