a dayes, belike, as helpe me God, ten of pe clokke, no malice at all, bi and bi; and Chaucer uses the phrases, to bring about, to drive a bargain, platly ayenst him. Bondman in the Parson's sermon is taken in the Gloucester sense, not in that of Rutland; and this bad sense it has kept ever since. We see caterwaw and newe fangel; also award, which seems to come from the Icelandic aqvarda (allot).1 Badder stands for pejor.

As to the many French words employed by Chaucer, he often yokes them with their English brethren, using them in the same breath; thus he talks of seuretee or sikernesse, robbe and reve. He has also scarcely and menes (instrumenta). In the Squieres Tale, about line 180, we see the first instance of a well-known vulgarism: 'There may no man it drive:

And cause why, for they con not the craft.'

Our lower orders have refused to part with Chaucer's markis, though our upper class can only talk of a marquis or marquess. That nobleman's lady is called by Chaucer a markisesse. The adjective able had been used in England before he was born. He has sextein (sexton) and raffle, and talks of a pair of tonges. He sometimes leans to the Latin rather than the French, writing equal as well as egality, perfection as well as parfit.

Chaucer's speech is much the same as Mandeville's, and very unlike it is to what must have been the London dialect a hundred years before their time. Gower

1 Garnett's Essays, p. 32.

2 I remember in Somerset a yoke of oxen called Good Luck and Fortune.

resembles his brother bard, except that he clips the prefix to the Passive Participle, and tries to keep alive the Active Participle in and; Chaucer unluckily stuck to the corrupt ending in ing, first seen in Layamon. Lydgate and Occleve followed in the steps of the great Londoner; their loving reverence for him atones for much dulness in their song. Even King James I. of Scotland sometimes dropped his Northern speech, and clave to Chaucer as a pattern; though the aforesaid speech was the Court language to the North of the Tweed, and so remained down to the days of the later Stuarts. Toward the end of the Fourteenth Century, a son of Edward III. made what we may call his dying confession in English; and early in the next age our tongue was employed instead of French by Princes, by Cardinals, and by the future hero of Agincourt. Ellis' Letters on English History show us best how the language was being by degrees pared down; its most obsolete form is to be found in the despatches of the Royal officers who were fighting against Glendower. It is curious to mark the difference of the speech of Northern knights, such as Assheton and Waterton, from that of a Somersetshire man like Luttrell. The State papers, drawn up by the men of the Irish Pale, prove that Dublin was now taking London for her pattern in these Agincourt days; Friar Michael of Kildare's speech was a thing of the past.

If we wish to know what was the best, or rather the most fashionable, English spoken in 1432, we must glance at a petition given in by Beauchamp Earl of Warwick

to the good Duke Humphrey and many of our Bishops.' The Earl, having the charge of the boy King Henry VI., craved full powers as to whipping the future founder of Eton College; the child's growing years were causing him 'more and more to grucche with chastising, and to lothe it.' The petition shows us that the endings of verbs had been much clipped, that the Southern thilke had, in some measure, made way for that (ille), that Wickliffe's suche (talis) had come to be preferred to Chaucer's swiche, and that the Northern their and theim were encroaching on the Southern her and hem. It was still thought the right thing to say, like Manning, yeve and ayeins, though Caxton was afterwards to bring us back to the true old spelling. The phrase 'speech at part' shows us whence comes our ' apart,' and 'owe' (debent) makes us aware that some resistance was made to our corrupt 'ought.' The Plural Adjectives in the phrase, 'causes necessaries and resonables,' are a token of lingering French influence, which acted upon Warwick, an old soldier of the great French war. One half of the nouns, verbs, and adverbs in this State paper are of French birth; indeed, there could not well be a greater proportion of Romance terms in a Queen's speech compiled by the Gladstone cabinet. The unhappy Suffolk, one of the Council to whom the petition is addressed, was himself the writer of a noble letter of advice; this, being drawn up not long before his death for his son's behoof, is far more Teutonic than Warwick's petition. Still homelier are the letters

1 Gairdner's edition of the Paston Letters (in 1872), page 31. 2 Do., page 121.

coming from Norfolk manor-houses; here we find the East Anglian arn (sunt) and the qu replacing hw, as quhat for hwat, quan for hwen, much as in the Genesis and Exodus of the same shires, compiled two hundred years before. Manning's way of writing ho for who is repeated. A paper of the date 1419 shows that almost all inflections had been pared away.1 Soon afterwards we find the French z employed for the old English s at the end of words. In a letter of 1440 we see Mandeville's corruption of ayenst repeated.2 We also find the new phrases that meene tyme and be the meene of, in 1424; the last phrase was one generation later to become be menys of 3 Many a corruption, now used by us, had its rise in shires far to the North of London; in the great city, writers who aimed at dignity of style preserved the old inflections that were on the wane elsewhere. Shillingford, Mayor of Exeter, shows us the lingering remnant of Southern speech in a letter of his y-written yn Alle Sawlyn day.' He reports from London, whither he had gone on a lawsuit, the 'Alagge! alagge!' (alack) uttered by Archbishop Kemp the Chancellor in 1447, one of the first instances of that exclamation, which may come from the old eala of our fathers. We are rather amazed to find that the Northern tham (illos) had already taken root in Devonshire by the side of the old ham and buth (sunt).4

Capgrave and Lydgate, both East Anglians, were reckoned two of the great lights of the first half of this

1 Gairdner's edition of the Paston Letters (in 1872), page 7.

2 Do., p. 40.

3 Do., pp. 15, 17, 493.

• Shillingford's Letters (Camden Society), pp. 17, 18.

Century. A far greater master of English was Bishop Pecock, the best of our prose writers in this age, a man who was in theology a compound of Bellarmine and Hooker, and who therefore drew down upon himself the wrath of the Anglican Church. Pecock is the last good writer in whom we see the old Southern form thilk for iste. By 1450 the speech of the Mercian Danelagh had all but made a thorough conquest of London; the prefix to the Past Participle was nearly gone; and the endings of Verbs were not to last many years. Chaucer's example, though he was held to be the best of all patterns of language, had been unable to preserve the few traces of Southern speech that lingered in his day. The old zede (ivit) had made way for went; Capgrave's eldfæder for graunt fadir. We find both schulde and schude, the last showing the rise of our present pronunciation of should. The helpful for is no longer used to compound verbs, as to fordo. We see both esilier and esier, the old and the new form of the Comparative in the Adverb. England henceforward became so slovenly as to express the Comparative of both the Adjective and the Adverb by one and the same word. The Bishop is most fond of tacking on a French ending to an English root, like the bondage of 1303; we find in his work se-able, knowe-able, here-able, do-able, dout-able; also craftiose.2 The English un is preferred to the Latin in in uncongruité, unmoveable, and

1 Pecock's Repressor, whence I quote, was published by the Master of the Rolls. I give a long passage from it in my Appendix.

2 When we want a new adjective, we almost always compound with this foreign able. Dr. Johnson spoke of an unclubbable man; we speak of a thing as uncomeatable, when it is inaccessible.