evolving, where it roosted.
In many parts of the country there was hardly anyone left to work the land or tend the livestock. The acute shortage of labour meant that for the first time those who did the basic work had a lever, had some power to break from their feudal past and demand better conditions and higher wages. The administration put out lengthy and severe notices forbidding labourers to try for wage increases, attempting to force them to keep to pre-plague wages and demands, determined to stifle these uneasy, unruly rumblings. They failed. Wages rose. The price of property fell. Many peasants, artisans, or what might be called workingclass people discovered plague-emptied farms and superior houses, which they occupied.
The English and English were breaking through. Wat Tyler led the Peasantsâ Revolt, which in its mere five days of life threatened to do for England in 1381 most of what the French revolutionaries did for France in 1790. If it can be said to have failed by one act and one man, then that man was the boy king â thirteen years old â Richard II. He stopped it by having the guile and the guts to meet Wat Tyler and his conquering army (they had taken the hitherto impregnable White Tower of London) at Smithfield, addressing him in English. At Smithfield, using English under duress, he pulled Wat Tyler into a trap in which he was murdered and immediately and daringly rode across to the rebels and addressed them, also in English. He gave promises which placated them and turned them home, promises which he soon broke, homes in which they were hunted down. But English was at the heart of it. As far as we know, Richard II is the first recorded example of a monarch using only English since the Conquest. And he reached for it when he was within a few minutes of seeing his kingdom transformed utterly.
Just as importantly, though, the revolt was fired by the preacher John Ball, whose words were already notorious and whose sermon at Greenwich the day before the rebels marched on London began: âWhen Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?â The heft of what he said, all in English, with his gift for rhyme, was far nearer the Old English epics than the graces of the imported French troubadours.
John Ball, priest of Saint Mary, greeteth well all manner of men and bids âem in the name of the Trinity, Father and Son and Holy Ghost, stand manly together in truth, and helpeth truth, and truth shall help you. Now reigneith pride in price, and covetousness is held wise, and lechery without shame, and gluttony without blame. Envy reigneth with treason, and sloth is taken in great season. God make the reckoning, for now is time. Amen.
English was the language of protest and protesting its right to be heard and taken account of before the highest in the land. And the highest of the land used it in 1381, to chop down the revolt of thousands of English speakers.
It was about this time that English replaced French in the schoolrooms, and for that we have the authority of the Cornishman John of Trevisa (d. 1402). In 1387, at Oxford, he translated Ranulf Higdenâs Latin Polychronicon, the chronicle of many ages from the Creation to 1352. Higden reviews the language situation before the first plague and comes to conclusions which must cause us to challenge assumptions based on the benign (for English) effects of Anglo-Norman mixed marriage and hence the bilingualism among Anglo-Norman children. In his view, English was in great peril from 1066 onwards. Higden saw a decline in English before the plague and accounted for it in this way, as John Trevisaâs translation tells us: âOn ys for chyldern in scole agenes þe vsage and manere of al oþer nacions, buþ compelled for to leue here oune longage . . .â
In Modern English:
One [reason] is that children in school, contrary to the usage and custom of all other nations, are compelled to abandon their own language and
In many parts of the country there was hardly anyone left to work the land or tend the livestock. The acute shortage of labour meant that for the first time those who did the basic work had a lever, had some power to break from their feudal past and demand better conditions and higher wages. The administration put out lengthy and severe notices forbidding labourers to try for wage increases, attempting to force them to keep to pre-plague wages and demands, determined to stifle these uneasy, unruly rumblings. They failed. Wages rose. The price of property fell. Many peasants, artisans, or what might be called workingclass people discovered plague-emptied farms and superior houses, which they occupied.
The English and English were breaking through. Wat Tyler led the Peasantsâ Revolt, which in its mere five days of life threatened to do for England in 1381 most of what the French revolutionaries did for France in 1790. If it can be said to have failed by one act and one man, then that man was the boy king â thirteen years old â Richard II. He stopped it by having the guile and the guts to meet Wat Tyler and his conquering army (they had taken the hitherto impregnable White Tower of London) at Smithfield, addressing him in English. At Smithfield, using English under duress, he pulled Wat Tyler into a trap in which he was murdered and immediately and daringly rode across to the rebels and addressed them, also in English. He gave promises which placated them and turned them home, promises which he soon broke, homes in which they were hunted down. But English was at the heart of it. As far as we know, Richard II is the first recorded example of a monarch using only English since the Conquest. And he reached for it when he was within a few minutes of seeing his kingdom transformed utterly.
Just as importantly, though, the revolt was fired by the preacher John Ball, whose words were already notorious and whose sermon at Greenwich the day before the rebels marched on London began: âWhen Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?â The heft of what he said, all in English, with his gift for rhyme, was far nearer the Old English epics than the graces of the imported French troubadours.
John Ball, priest of Saint Mary, greeteth well all manner of men and bids âem in the name of the Trinity, Father and Son and Holy Ghost, stand manly together in truth, and helpeth truth, and truth shall help you. Now reigneith pride in price, and covetousness is held wise, and lechery without shame, and gluttony without blame. Envy reigneth with treason, and sloth is taken in great season. God make the reckoning, for now is time. Amen.
English was the language of protest and protesting its right to be heard and taken account of before the highest in the land. And the highest of the land used it in 1381, to chop down the revolt of thousands of English speakers.
It was about this time that English replaced French in the schoolrooms, and for that we have the authority of the Cornishman John of Trevisa (d. 1402). In 1387, at Oxford, he translated Ranulf Higdenâs Latin Polychronicon, the chronicle of many ages from the Creation to 1352. Higden reviews the language situation before the first plague and comes to conclusions which must cause us to challenge assumptions based on the benign (for English) effects of Anglo-Norman mixed marriage and hence the bilingualism among Anglo-Norman children. In his view, English was in great peril from 1066 onwards. Higden saw a decline in English before the plague and accounted for it in this way, as John Trevisaâs translation tells us: âOn ys for chyldern in scole agenes þe vsage and manere of al oþer nacions, buþ compelled for to leue here oune longage . . .â
In Modern English:
One [reason] is that children in school, contrary to the usage and custom of all other nations, are compelled to abandon their own language and
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