His doublet bore another English device: ‘it is as it is.’[1]
Trevisa says that before the great Plague of 1349 high
and low alike were bent on learning French; it was a
common custom: ‘but sith it is somedele chaunged.’
In 1362 English was made the language of the Law-courts;
and this English was neither that of Hampole
to the North of the Humber, nor that of Herebert to the
South of the Thames. Our old freedom and our old
speech had been alike laid in the dust by the great blow
of 1066: the former had arisen once more in 1215 and
had been thriving amain ever since; the latter was now
at last enjoying her own again.
After this glance at Kingly patronage, something almost unknown hitherto, we must now throw a glance backward, and mark the changes since the Handlyng Synne had been given to the world. Many writers, both in prose and in rime, had been at work in the first half of the Fourteenth Century: of their pieces I have already given some specimens. Forme-fader, ganed, hyrwe, ilîc, iseowed, ileaned, lawerce, ofþurst, sêli, ismêþet, spinnere, tœppet, þridde were now turned into forefader, yâned (yawned), harew,[2] aliche, isewed (the participle of the Latin suere), ilend,[3] larke, athurst, sili, ismôþed (smoothed), spiþre (spider), tippet, þirde. There are new words and forms such as awkward, bacward, tall, until, ded as a dorenail, a biwey (bye-way). The most startling are turn up swa doune (upside down) in Hampole, and she-beast much
