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[1] This was the opinion of Ames: "This seems to be the first grammar of the French language in our own country, if not in Europe." Dibdin, Herbert Ames's Typographical Antiquities, 1819, iii. p. 365.

[2] The grammar of Jacques Sylvius or Dubois appeared in 1531, a year after Palsgrave's. No attempt at a theoretical treatment of the French language appeared in France in the Middle Ages. There are, however, two Provençal ones extant. (F. Brunot, "Le Français à l'étranger," in L. Petit de Julleville's Histoire de la langue et de la littérature française, ii. p. 528.)

[3] One of the chief effects of the Conquest in the schools is said to have been the substitution of Norman for English schoolmasters (Leach, Schools of Mediaeval England, 1915, p. 103).

[4] The majority of early Latin vocabularies extant, however, are accompanied by English translations (cp. T. Wright, Volume of Vocabularies, 2 vols., 1857), as was also the comparatively well-known Promptorium Parvulorum (c. 1440), Camden Soc., 1865.

[5] The text is given in L. E. Menger's Anglo-Norman Dialect, Columbia University Press, 1904, p. 14. The psalms, together with Cato, Ovid, or possibly Virgil, formed the usual reading material in the Grammar Schools. Cp. Rashdall, Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, Oxford, 1895, ii. p. 603.

[6] Adam du Petit Pont (d. 1150) wrote an epistle in Latin, many words of which were glossed in French. But there is no evidence that it was used in England. It was published by E. Scheler in his Trois traités de lexicographie latine du 12e et 13e siècles, Leipzig, 1867.

[7] Ed. T. Wright, Volume of Vocabularies, i. 96, and Scheler, op. cit. Both editions are deemed unsatisfactory by Paul Meyer (Romania, xxxvi. 482).

[8] It has been published five times: (1) At Caen by Vincent Correr in 1508 (Romania, ut supra); (2) H. Géraud, in Documents inédits sur l'histoire de France: "Paris sous Philippe le Bel d'après les documents originaux," 1837; (3) Kervyn de Lettenhove, 1851; (4) T. Wright, Volume of Vocabularies, i. pp. 120 sqq.; (5) Scheler, Trois traités de lexicographie latine.

[9] Wright, op. cit. pp. 139–141.

[10] Statutes of the Colleges of Oxford, 3 vols., Oxford and London, 1853; A. Clark, Colleges of Oxford, 1891, p. 140; H. C. Maxwell Lyte, History of the University of Oxford, 1880, pp. 140–151.

[11] Documents relating to the Universities and Colleges of Cambridge, 1852, ii. p. 33; J. Bass Mullinger, The University of Cambridge, 1873; G. Peacock, Observations on the Statutes of the University of Cambridge, 1841, p. 4.

[12] J. Heywood, Early Cambridge University and College Statutes, 1885, ii. p. 182.

[13] C. H. Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, Cambridge, 1852, i. p. 40.

[14] Rashdall, op. cit. ii. p. 519 n.

[15] Rashdall, op. cit. i. pp. 319 et seq. Later the English nation was known as the German; it included all students from the north and east of Europe. On the English in the University of Paris see Ch. Thurot, De l'organisation de l'enseignement dans l'Université de Paris, Paris, 1850; and J. E. Sandys, "English Scholars of Paris, and Franciscans of Oxford," in The Cambridge History of English Literature, i., 1908, chap. x. pp. 183 et seq.

[16] Quoted, E. J. B. Rathery, Les Relations sociales et intellectuelles entre la France et l'Angleterre, Paris, 1856, p. 11.

[17] A writer of about 1180 says it was impossible to tell who were Normans and who English ("Dialogus de Scaccario": Stubbs, Select Charters, 4th ed., 1881, p. 168).

[18] "Discours sur l'état des lettres au 13^e siècle," in the Histoire littéraire de la France, xvi. p. 168.

[19] D. Behrens, in H. Paul's Grundiss der germanischen Philologie, Strassbourg, 1901, pp. 953–55; Freeman, Norman Conquest, v. 1876, pp. 528 sqq.; Maitland, "Anglo-French Law Language," in the Cambridge History of English Literature, i. pp. 407 sqq., History of English Law, 1895, pp. 58 sqq., and Collected Papers, 1911, ii. p. 436. At the universities, where Latin was the usual language of correspondence, letters and petitions were often drawn up in French (Oxford Hist. Soc., Collectanea, 1st series, 1885, pp. 8 sqq.).

[20] Bateson, Mediaeval England, 1903, p. 319.

[21] Maitland, Collected Papers, 1911, ii. p. 437.

[22] Such are Bozon's Contes moralisés (c. 1320), ed. P. Meyer, in the Anciens Textes Français, 1889. In his Introduction Meyer lays stress on the widespread use of French in England at this time, and its chance of becoming the national language of England, an eventuality which, he thinks, might have been a benefit to humanity.

[23] MS. at Trinity Col. Cambridge (R. 3. 56).

[24] Paul Meyer calls it the work of a true grammarian (Romania, xxxii. p. 65).

[25] There are four MSS. extant. These have been collated and published by J. Sturzinger in the Altfranzösische Bibliothek, vol. viii., Heilbronn, 1884; cp. Romania, xiv. p. 60. The earliest MS. is in the Record Office, and was published by T. Wright in Haupt and Hoffman's Altdeutsche Blaetter (ii. p. 193). Diez quoted from this edition in his Grammaire des langues romanes, 3rd ed. i. pp. 415, 418 sqq. The three other MSS. are in the Brit. Mus., Camb. Univ. Libr. and Magdalen Col. Oxon., and belong to the three succeeding centuries. Portions of the Magdalen Col. MS. are quoted by A. J. Ellis, in his Early English Pronunciation, pp. 836–839, and by F. Génin, in his preface to the French Government reprint of Palsgrave's Grammar, 1852. It is the British Museum copy, made in the reign of Edward III., which contains the French commentary.

[26] Early English writers on the French tongue were fond of drawing attention to the opportunities for punning afforded by the language.

[27] Edited by Miss M. K. Pope in the Modern Language Review (vol. v., 1910, pt. ii. pp. 188 sqq.), from the Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 17716, ff. 88–91; it also exists at All Souls, Oxford (MS. 182 f. 340), and at Trinity Col. Cambridge (MS. B 14. 39, 40); in the last MS. the introduction of the two preceding ones is lacking (cp. Meyer, Romania, xxxii. p. 59).

[28] For instance, we are told that a is sounded almost like e as in savez vous faire un chauncoun …; that the phrases a, en a, i a which mean one and the same thing when they come from the Latin habet, should be written without d; that aura, en array should be written without e in the middle, and sounded without u, as aray, en array, though the English include the e.

[29] Published by Stengel, in the Zeitschrift für neufranzösische Sprache und Literatur, 1879, pp. 16–22.

[30] Miss Pope, ut supra.

[31] His name has provoked some discussion as to its correct form. It is frequently written as Biblesworth, and one MS. gives it the form of Bithesway; the correct form, however, is Bibbesworth, the name of a manor in the parish of Kempton (Herts), of which Walter was the owner (P. Meyer, Romania, xv. p. 312, and xxx. p. 44 n.; W. Aldis Wright, Notes and Queries, 1877, 4th Series, viii. p. 64).

[32] Printed from the MS. in the Bodleian, in Wright and Halliwell's Reliquiae Antiquae, i. p. 134.

[33] Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1247–58, pp. 58, 103, 187. He received exemption from being put on assizes or juries in 1249.

[34] Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1301–1307, p. 39.

[35] She died in 1304; her father was one of the leaders on the king's side at the battle of Lewes (1264).

[36] There are many MSS. in the British Museum; others at Oxford and Cambridge, and one in the Library of Sir Th. Phillips at Cheltenham. The best-known edition of the vocabulary is that of T. Wright, Volume of Vocabularies, i. pp. 142–174, which is the one here quoted, and which reproduces Arundel MS. 220, collated with Sloane MS. 809. P. Meyer has given a critical edition of the first eighty-six lines in his Recueil d'anciens textes—partie française, No. 367 (cp. Romania, xiii. p. 500).

[37] In the vocabularies written in imitation of Bibbesworth at later dates, the English gloss is fuller, and in the latest one complete, as French became more and more a foreign language.

[38] "Pus to le frauncoys com il en court en age de husbonderie, com pur arer, rebiner, waretter, semer, sarcher, syer, faucher, carier, batre, moudre, pestrer, briser," etc.

[39] Polychronicon, lib. 1, cap. 59 (ed. Babington and Lumly, Rolls Publications, 41, 1865–66, vol. ii. pp. 159 sqq.).

[40] Cp. the thirteenth-century romance in which Jehan de Dammartin teaches French to Blonde of Oxford (ed. Le Roux de Lincy, Camden Soc., 1858).

[41] F. Anstey, Monumenta Academica, 1868, p. 438.

[42] Anstey, op. cit., 1868, p. 302.

[43] Published from a MS. in Cambridge University Library (Ee 4, 20), by Skeat, in the Transactions of the Philological Society (1903–1906).

[44] The MS. in which the work is preserved dates from about 1340, but is probably copied from an earlier one.

[45]

"Corps teste et hanapel

Body heuede and heuedepanne

Et peil cresceant sur la peal.

And here growende on the skyn," etc.

[46] How close the resemblance is between the two works may be judged by the following quotations:

Par le gel nous avons glas,

Et de glas vient verglas. (Nominale.)

Pur le gel vous avomus glas,

Et pluvye e gele fount vereglas. (Bibbesworth.)

And it is in words almost identical with those of Bibbesworth that the author describes the difference in the meaning of some words according to their gender:

La levere deit clore les dentz.

The lippe.

Le levere en boys se tient de deynz.

The hare.

La livre sert a marchauntz.

The pounde.

Le livere aprent nous enfauntz.

The boke.

[47] The earliest of these MSS. dates from the second decade of the fourteenth century. These epistolaries are found in the following MSS.: Harleian 4971 and 3988, Addit. 17716, in the Brit. Mus.; Ee 4, 20 in Cantab. Univ. Library; B 14. 39, 40 in Trinity Col. Camb.; 182 at All Souls, Oxford, and 188 Magdalen Col. Oxford (cp. Stürzinger, Altfranzösiche Bibliothek), viii. pp. xvii-xix. The Introductions to these letters were edited in a Griefswald Dissertation (1898), by W. Uerkvitz.

[48] Stengel, op. cit. pp. 8–10.

[49] Romania, iv. p. 381, xxxii. p, 22.

[50] W. Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Cambridge, 1896, pp. 635 sqq.

[51] L. Menger, Anglo-Norman Dialect; Behrens, art. cit. pp. 960 sqq.; Brunot, Histoire de la langue française, i. pp. 319 sqq., 369.

[52] Brunot, op. cit. i. p. 331.

[53] Jusserand, Histoire littéraire du peuple anglais, 1896. p. 240 n.

[54] Brunot, op. cit. i. p. 369.

[55] P. Meyer commends Gower's French (Romania, xxxii. p. 43).

[56] T. R. Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, London, 1892, p. 458.

[57] Livre ii. ch. xii.

[58] As in those of Olivier Basselin.

[59] Eustache Deschamps, Œuvres, ed. Crapelet, p. 91, quoted by Rathery, op. cit. p. 181 (cp. also English Political Songs, ed. T. Wright. Camden Soc., 1839).

[60] Jusserand, op. cit. p. 153 n. The fourteenth branch of the Roman is specially mentioned: cp. Brunot, op. cit. i. p. 369, n. 4.

[61] Brunot, op. cit. i. 330. It is not rare to find English pronunciation of French ridiculed in France, and Englishmen represented as talking a sort of gibberish; cp. Romania, xiv. pp. 99, 279, and Brunot, op. cit. p. 369 n.

[62] Behrens, op. cit. p. 957.

[63] Ed. E. Martin, 1882, l. 2351 sqq.

[64] Recueil général et complet des fabliaux, ed. Montaiglon et Raynaud, ii. p. 178.

[65] Maitland, Collected Papers, 1911, ii. p. 436; Freeman, op. cit. p. 536; Brunot, op. cit. i. p. 373.

[66] F. Watson, Religious Refugees and English Education, London, 1911, p. 6. There are numerous entries of such works in the Stationers' Register.

[67] Answer to Dr. Lindsey's epigram, Works, ed. 1841, i. p. 634.

[68] [H. Dell], The Frenchified Lady never in Paris, London, 1757.

[69] Pepys in his Diary notes the use of French in such phrases, and the Abbé Le Blanc (Lettres d'un Français sur les Anglais, à la Haye, 1745) was also struck by the custom.

[70] Bateson, Mediaeval England, p. 342; Warton, History of English Poetry, p. 10 n.

[71] Ellis, Original Letters, 3rd series, 1846, i. p. xi.

[72] M. A. E. Green (née Wood), Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, London, 1846; The Paston Letters, new edition by J. Gairdner, 3 vols., London, 1872–75; H. Ellis, Original Letters, 3rd series, London, 1846; J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, Letters of the Kings of England, London, 1846; C. L. Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century, Oxford, 1893, pp. 193 et seq.; Hallam, Literature of Europe, 6th ed., London, 1860, i. p. 54.

[73] "Que tout seigneur, baron, chevalier et honestes hommes de bonnes villes mesissent cure et dilligence de estruire et apprendre leurs enfans le langhe françoise, par quoy il en fuissent plus avec et plus costumier ens leurs gherres" (Froissart, quoted by Behrens, op. cit. p. 957 n.).

[74] Higden, ut supra.