6o2 APPENDIX C island evidence of the early forms of names is to be sought for in vain from these sources. Even so late as 1438, the Countess of Stafford makes a sort of apology for, or at any rate thinks it necessary to explain, the making of her will in English, the reason doubtless being that she did not understand Latin. It was the custom at this time and down to the sixteenth century for the voluntas, which dealt with realty, to be in Latin, and the testamentum, which dealt with personalty, to be in English, as in Robert Corn's will referred to above. It may be the Countess was apologising for not observing this rule. " [I] ordeyne and make my testament in English tongue for my most profit, redyng and understandyng in this wise." Early Chancery Bills are almost invariably in French down to the reign of Henry V, when English becomes customary. (See Selden Soc, Select Cases in Chancery, ed. Baildon; only one Latin bill dated 1389 is to be found in this volume). The earliest English deed among the Calverley Charters is in 143 1. (Thoresby Soc, vol. vi). Indeed, it was not until the reign of Henry VII that English became the language of the Law Courts, while for the official records of the law, and for letters patent, and writs, the use of Latin lasted even down to the reign of George II (1731), with the brief exception of the Commonwealth period. Maitland also points out that French became the language of litigants and their Counsel, and prevailed in the King's Courts when English was still in use in the local ones. Indeed a judge is found as late as the seventeenth century keeping his private diary in that strange French legal jargon which was used for so long a period by English lawyers, and of which the knowledge persisted almost into the nineteenth centur) Local dialects. Till a comparatively late period moreover (and even to the present day in some measure), English has varied greatly according to locality. The dialects of the North and the South and West were widely different (as indeed they are to-day), the Midlands speaking a blend of all three. This is well illustrated as late as Caxton's day by his story of the good wife of Kent, who annoyed the mercer who asked for eggs by saying she knew no French, for he also knew none, but readily grasped what was wanted when someone else sug- gested the word eyren. Just as eggs was in use in one part of the country and eyren in another, so the form which any proper name took depended very much on the language spoken by the clerk who was endeavouring to give its written equivalent. Spelling, Spelling too, at this date was phonetic, and the same name might appear in one document with such varied lettering as to suggest two different ones. The Editor can recall a comparatively late will in which the testator's name (Nichols) was spelt in about a dozen different ways, and may mention that he knows of a child with the pet name of Tiny receiving a Christmas card from a Belgian girl addressed Taijnij. This modern instance has its counterpart in the Close Rolls of Hen. Ill, where Murdoch O'Brien figures as Moriar deHaghobren; and circa 1340, where one Edina, called in Erse Ny McEgan [i.e. daughter of the MacEgans], has figured for years in Peerages under the cacophonous and grotesque appellation of Snymecaga. There is too, the case of the famous coudottieri
