Marriage of the Black Prince to the Fair Maid of Kent. Kent. A.D. 1361. Prince to Joan, commonly called the Fair Maid of She was the grand-daughter of Edward I., her father being Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent, the sixth and youngest son of Edward I. On the death of her brother, John, Earl of Kent, without issue, she became Countess of Kent. The Black Prince was this beautiful lady's third husband; her first was Sir Thomas Holland, Steward of the Household to William Montague, Earl of Salisbury; her second, from whom she was divorced, was Salisbury himself. The Prince and Joan being cousins, a special dispensation to allow of their marriage was obtained from the Pope. A.D. 1362. Soon after the marriage of his son, King Edward created him Duke of Aquitaine. It was evident that Aquitaine. the large dominions in the south of France of which King Edward was now absolute sovereign, could not be governed by a mere deputy, however wise and personally loved he might be. The English rule was far from popular in France, and nothing but the fact of a king or a king's son dwelling among them was likely to make that rule acceptable. It was for these reasons that King Edward created his son Duke of Aquitaine, and made him ruler over that part of his dominions. But yet, and wisely too, he did not make him absolute sovereign over the country. Such a course would have deprived the King of England of all power over his newly-recovered dominions, and of creating one of his younger sons Duke of Aquitaine at his own death; and would have ended either in the establishment of a line of English Kings of Aquitaine independent of England, or, possibly, of making the King of England subordinate to the King of Aquitaine. The Black Prince would, at his father's CHAP. IV. DUKE OF AQUITAINE. 69 solute over that death, have become King of Aquitaine and England. A.D. 1362. It was the object of Edward's policy to prevent such but is not a combination, for the English nation would not have made absubmitted to such degradation, and there would pro- Sovereign bably have risen up a competitor for the English country. crown. This must have ended, eventually, in the severance of the two kingdoms.1 King Edward, therefore, imposed on his son the annual payment of an ounce of gold at the palace of Westminster, "as an open indication and clear demonstration that our son holds the aforesaid things under us and our Majesty and by Liege Homage."2 As remarked by Mr. Hallam,3 "so high were the notions of this great monarch, in an age when the privilege of creating new kingdoms was deemed to belong to the Pope and the Emperor," that he added, that he expressly reserved to himself the right to make Aquitaine into a kingdom. This was on July 19th, 1362, but it was not until the following February that the Prince embarked for his new dominions. 4 1 See Sismondi, vol. ii. p. 95. 2 Rymer, vol. iii. p. 669. ▲ Ibid. p. 667. Statutes. CHAPTER V. DOMESTIC LEGISLATION. A.D. 1362. THE importance and interest of the relations between Important England and France at this juncture can hardly be overrated, but yet there is a more permanent value in the glimpses from time to time obtained of the internal progress of the English nation in civilisation. It was at this moment that various legislative measures were enacted, the effect and interest of which remain at the present day as fresh and important as they were at the time of their enactment, though five centuries have since passed by. The most memorable of these, was that establishing the use of the English language. England had hitherto been almost as much French as English, and, had Edward succeeded in placing himself on the throne of France, would, in all probability, have been merged in France, until, scorning such a position, she again made herself an independent kingdom. But this was not to be. England remained England, and the English language was now to become the language of the nation. The Eng lish lan guage commenced At a Parliament which met on October 13th, 1362, it was ordered that the English instead of the French to be used language should thenceforth be used in pleadings in in the Law the Courts of Law. The reason given in the Statute (36 Ed. III. stat. 1. c. 15) for this change, is that "the French tongue is much unknown" in England, Courts. CHAP. V. ENGLISH LANGUAGE USED IN LAW COURTS. 71 "so that the people which do implead, or be impleaded, A.D. 1362. in the King's Court, and in the Courts of other, have no knowledge nor understanding of that which is said for them or against them by their Serjeants and other Pleaders."1 guage of It is clear from this, that the English language had already made way, but it is remarkable that this Law itself was written in French. Indeed, although the English language had made so great progress among the nation in general, that the poems of Chaucer, the first and one of the greatest of English poets and the very founder of English literature, may be read with tolerable ease at the present day, yet a bastard kind of French was still the spoken and written language of the upper classes. In the early French. part of this century, French was the language which the lanthe children of gentlemen were taught to speak the upper from their cradle, and it was the only language allowed to be used by boys at school. About a quarter of a century after the passing of this Statute, such was no longer the case. Trevisa, the translator of Higden's Chronicle from Latin into English, says: "This manner was myche yused tofore the first moreyn and is sith the som dele ychaungide in alle the gramer scoles of England children leveth Frensche and lerneth an Englisch." This change was probably greatly brought about by the Statutes of the Realm, folio, vol. i. p. 395, and see also Rot. Parl. vol. ii. p. 273. 2 Craik's Hist. Eng. Lit. vol. i. p. 160, and see the same work p. 98, quoting the original passage from Ralph Higden. "Also gentil mennes children beth ytaught for to speke Frensche from the time that thei both rokked in her cradel, and cunneth speke and playe with a childes brooche; and uplondish men wol likne hem self to gentilmen," &c. &c. classes. A.D. 1362. Statute under consideration. King Edward the Third was hardly able even to speak English,1 always wrote his despatches in French, and his proclamations were often made in that language; but it was a wretched travestie of it, so much so indeed, that Chaucer writing a few years later, says: "of whyche speche the Frenche men have as good a fantasye as we have in hearing of French mennes Englyshe," " and he expresses the same fact in the well known. lines: "After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe. For Frenche of Paris was to her unknowe." "2 But, although the English language was ordered to be used in pleadings in open court, in order that all men might understand what was going on, the pleas and all the proceedings in a cause were ordered to be enrolled in a Latin Record, and "the reports of what 1 "We have no satisfactory proof that any one of the first three Edwards spoke English, and it would appear that Edward III. on some public occasion found it difficult to put together three consecutive words in the national tongue."-Pauli's Pictures of Old England, page 208. 2 Specimen of King Edward's French, taken from a letter to his son. Avesbury, p. 98. "Tresch . . . & tresame filtz nous sauoms bien je vous desviez mult de sauoir bones nouelx de nous & de nre estat vous faceoms assauoir je au partier du cestes nous esteioms heites de corps dieux ensoit loie." Another, of the language used in proclamations, from Rymer, vol. iii. p. 469; "Come en nostre parlement, pur refriendre la malice des servantz qi furent percionses nient voillantz servire apres la pestilence, saunz trope outrageouses lowers prendre." Another, of Parliamentary language, from Parliamentary Rolls. "Soit ordeine covenable Remedie, & coment la Ples purra meltz estre gardez & le People de son Roialme vivre en ese & quiete."-Rot. Parl. vol. ii. p. 268. "Item, que lui plese or deiner plente d'or & d'argent."—Ibid. p. 271. |