In England, for many centuries, Latin had been the language of voluminous official and judicial records, and it was not dislodged from this position until 1731. French slowly supplanted Latin as the literary language of the English law, and "legal proceedings were formerly all written in Norman or Law French, and even the arguments of counsel and decisions of the Court were in the same barbarous dialect, an evident and shameful badge, it must be owned, of tyranny and foreign servitude."[1] The Acts of Parliament were written in French until the fourth year of the reign of Henry the Seventh, but they were exclusively printed in English after that date. The Act of 1730-1 enacted that the records of the Courts, as well as all other legal proceedings, were to be in the English tongue and language only, and not in Latin or French, or any other tongue or language whatsoever. In the Courts of Wales it had been previously ordained by 27 Henry 8, c. 26, s. 20, that the English language was to be used, and not the Welsh language. There is very little evidence available at present to determine whether Welsh was used in the Courts of Great Sessions, either in the oral or written proceedings, to any extent whatsoever.
The statute of 1732-3 cleared up the doubts which had arisen upon the application of the Act of 1730-1, and English was to be used thenceforth in all the Courts in Wales.
A.D. 1746.—A very important clause affecting Wales was introduced in an Act (20 George 2, c. 42) passed in 1746 to enforce rates and duties upon houses, windows, and lights. It was declared by the 3rd section that where "England" only should be mentioned in any Act of Parliament it should be deemed to comprehend Wales and the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, a town which was originally part of Scotland. Although the other portions of this Act have been repealed this clause still remains law. We find also in the 3rd section of 7-8 George 4, c. 53, passed in 1827, that in all Acts of
- ↑ "Blackstone's Commentaries," vol. iii. c. 21.
