(bill) by the assent of II archbisshops and of the clergy to adnulle the bible that tyme translated into Englishe with other Englishe bookes of the exposicion off the gospells; whiche when it was harde and seyn of lordes and of the comones, the duke of Lancaster Jhon answered thereto ryght sharpely, sayenge this sentence: We will not be refuse of all other nacions; for sythen they have Goddes law whiche is the lawe of oure belefe in there owne langage, we will have onres in Englishe whosoever say naye. And this he affermyd with a great othe. Also Thomas Arundell Archebishoppe of Canterbury sayde in a sermon at Westmester at the buryenge of Queue Anne, that it was more joye of here than of any woman that ever he knewe. For she an alien borne hadde in englishe all the IIII gospels with the doctours upon them. And he said that she had sent them to him to examen and he saide that they were good and trewe.’[1] Here we see that English had kept its ground in the Palace; an intrusion which would have seemed strange, I suspect, to Edward the Second, the grandfather of stout Duke John. Not long after the Duke's death, an inscription in English was graven upon the brass set up in Higham Ferrars church to the memory of Archbishop Chicheley's brother.
We have seen what was the language of the Church in the days of Richard II.; we now turn to the speech of the Court. England had the honour of giving birth to one of the two great poets of the Middle Ages, of the
- ↑ Arber's Reprint of Rede me and be nott wrothe, page 176. In page 157 will be found a Fifteenth Century pun: the endowing of the clergy should be called ‘all amiss,’ rather than ‘almes.’
