And Twelfth- Century Britain and Ireland
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1 Peoples and languages in eleventh- and twelfth-century Britain and Ireland: reading the charter evidence RICHARD SHARPE As King William’s men set about taking over England in the first months of 1067, they must have encountered problems over language. The king himself is said to have tried to learn English, ‘so that he might understand the plaint (querelam ) of the subject people without an interpreter’, but he found that he was too old and too busy to achieve his goal. 1 The governance of the country through shires and hundreds would have involved difficulties of communication at many levels, but the new rulers none the less retained the existing structures. Writs in the English language were sent out under King William’s seal as they had been under King Edward’s and King Harold’s, and there is clear evidence that they were drafted by English clerks of the king’s chapel under the direction of the chancellor Regenbald.2 In 1070, however, the My thanks to Prof. Dauvit Broun and Prof. David Crouch for their helpful discussion and for several of the examples included here. I am grateful also to Dr Hugh Doherty, Dr Oliver Padel, and Dr Simon Taylor for their comments on a draft, and to Dr Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan, Prof. Ian Short, Prof. David Trotter, and Prof. Jocelyn Wogan-Brown, who responded to questions. Special thanks to Prof. Ad Putter, who persuaded me to write up these thoughts, and to Prof. Broun, who undertook to publish the bulky outcome. A shortened version will appear in Multilingualism in Medieval Britain. Sources and Analysis , ed. J. Jefferson & A. D. Putter (Turnhout, 2011). Recurrent reference is made to the following works: [D. R.] Bates, [Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum. The Acta of William I (1066–1087) (Oxford, 1998), cited by no.]; [G. W. S.] Barrow, [ The Charters of King ] David I. [The written acts of David I, king of Scots, 1124–53, and of his son, Henry, earl of Northumberland, 1139–52 (Woodbridge, 1999)]; [H. W. C. Davis, C. Johnson, H. A. Cronne, R. H. C. Davis], Regesta [regum Anglo-Normannorum (Oxford, 1913–69), vols. i–ii cited by no., vol. iii by vol. & no.]; [N. C.] Vincent, [ The Letters and Charters of Henry II ] (forthcoming) [by no.]. I am most grateful to Professor Vincent for the long-term use of his edition ahead of publication. 1Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastica historia , Book IV (ed. M. M. Chibnall (Oxford, 1968– 1980), ii. 256). Orderic is characteristically vague about when William made this attempt, but one may suppose that it was early in the reign. 2Regenbald was King Edward’s chancellor, whom King William retained and who, to judge from his name, was not certainly English by birth; he had served Edward as 2 RICHARD SHARPE language of writs changed, and King Williamadopted Latin as the normal language of written communication with the institutions of the realm. One can think of several reasons why it was decided that this was the right thing to do. The most obvious is that it allowed the king to recruit to his chapel Norman clerks who could not compose a document in English. They would have been accustomed to drafting in Latin rather than in French. There would also have been a simple practical advantage. When a writ was presented to the officers of a shire court or a hundred court, it would be read to the assembled gathering. Down to 1066 English was the language used. Now, however, as land was allocated to Normans and as the offices of bishop and sheriff were filled by Normans, there must have been a demand for the use of French in the shire court. The colonists could not understand English, yet at the same time they may not have regarded learning the language as a priority. Anselm in 1077, for example, appears not to envisage that Paul of Caen would need to learn English to serve as abbot of St Albans. 3 Nor did the colonized necessarily learn the new ruling tongue. Eadmer tells a story that depends for its effect on the fact that in the 1070s some monks of Canterbury spoke French, which an English monk did not understand. 4 It is not unusual to find miracle stories about understanding a language one does not know. So, when Vital de a king’s priest since at least 1050 (S. D. Keynes, ‘Regenbald the chancellor ( sic )’, Anglo-Norman Studies 10 (1987), 185–222). William confirmed to Regenbald the lands he already held (Bates 224), and he gave him lands in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire that had been held by King Harold in 1066 (Bates 223), probably during the first months of 1067. 3Anselm to Paul of Caen, Ep. 80, ‘For although your holiness is placed over barbarians whom you cannot teach by words because of the difference of your languages, . what you cannot say to them in words you can show by your life’ (ed. F. S. Schmitt, S. Anselmi opera omnia (Seckau, Rome, Edinburgh, 1938–61), iii. 203–4; English translation by W. Fröhlich, The Letters of Saint Anselm of Canterbury (Kalamazoo, MI, 1990–94), i. 211–13). 4The young English monk Ægelword was ignorant of French, but he miraculously understood what some French-speaking monks said and responded (Eadmer, Miracula S. Dunstani § 19, ed. A. J. Turner & B. J. Muir (Oxford, 2006), 186). This detail is only reported by Eadmer, but the occasion is mentioned in other sources and is datable to 1074 × 1077. PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES 3 Mortain visited England in the 1080s, he preached in French; his English hearers did not know the language but miraculously comprehended. 5 In such circumstances it would simplify matters to have royal writs drafted in Latin, not merely as more in line with Continental chancery practice but because it would be easier to find one person on hand to read and translate fromLatin into French, and another person to read and translate from Latin into English, than to find an interpreter who could read and translate directly between English and French or French and English.6 Latin, however, in secular contexts, served only to transmit the written word. The business of the courts would also require uiua uoce interpreters. This paper will seek to argue that the Latin charters bear explicit, if indirect, witness to the practical necessity of carrying out business in more than one language. For more than a century linguistic pluralism was embraced. In a British context this would allow for several languages in a single setting: in Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland Celtic languages came into more frequent contact with English and, in particular, with French than ever before. Latin provided the means of written communication and the basis for translation from the written word, but the engagement of laymen in public business required official provision for multilingualism. FRENCH AND ENGLISH AFTER THE CONQUEST In conquered England, explicit recognition of these two communities is seen already in documents issued before the change fromOld English to Latin in 1070. A writ of King William, datable between his coronation at Christmas 1066 and his departure for 5Vita beati Vitalis II 11, ed. E. P. Sauvage, Analecta Bollandiana 1 (1882), 355–410, at pp. 378–9: ‘cum multi ibidem adessent qui romanam linguam ignorabant’. 6The supposition that the transition is first seen in a bilingual writ-charter of Bishop Odo (Bates 74, datable 1070 × 1082/3) does not seem to me persuasive (C. Clark, ‘People and language in post-Conquest Canterbury’, Journal of Medieval History 2 (1976), 1–33; M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record. England 1066–1307 (London, 1979, 2nd edn, 1993), 211–12). Clanchy begs too many questions in his assumption, ‘the clerk of the court was presumably as capable of translating from Latin into the appropriate regional dialect as he had been of making Anglo-Saxon fully comprehensible in his locality’. 4 RICHARD SHARPE Normandy in March 1067, addresses the city of London in these words:7 Will(el)m kyng gret Will(el)m bisceop 7 Gosfregð portirefan 7 ealle þa burhwaru binnan Londone frencisce 7 englisce freondlice (‘King William greets in friendly manner Bishop William and the portreeve Geoffrey and all the boroughmen within London French and English’). Around the same time the archbishop of York obtained a writ in favour of the church of Beverley; it is addressed to the shire court of Yorkshire:8 Willelm cyngc gret ealle mine þegenas on Eoferwicscire frencisce 7 englisce freondlice (‘King William greets in friendly manner all my thegns in Yorkshire French and English’) In or soon after 1070 the abbot of Stow in Lincolnshire obtained a writ to present to shire courts at Lincoln and Nottingham: 9 Will(el)m king gret Þomas arceb(iscop) 7 Þurold <7> Earnwig his scyrgerefan 7 ealle þa þegnas on Snotingeham scyre 7 on Lincolscyre frencisce 7 englisce freondlice (‘King William greets in friendly manner Archbishop Thomas and Thorold <and> Earnwig his sheriffs and all the thegns of Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire French and English’). There are six such acts fromthis early phase of William’s reign. 10 It must be said that there are more than twenty comparable acts from this short period that do not include the words ‘frencisce 7 englisce’, and it is impossible to draw a line between them on a basis of date. That is, one cannot say that the phrase was introduced at a particular moment, and that all without it are earlier and all with it are later or vice versa. The inclusion of these words in such documents may have been a counterweight to the simplicity of the English regnal style: William, like King Edward, was often just Willelm cyngc or Willelmus rex , and when it was elaborated in England it was still only rex Anglorum .