Page:A transcript of the first volume, 1538-1636, of the parish register of Chesham in the county of Buckingham.djvu/19

 The Chesham Register does not contain very much of interest in the way of incidental information, although there are entries relating to several of the matters just adverted to. The first volume offers little that is noteworthy, excepting a copy of a deed of endowment, already mentioned (p. x.); a memorandum, also already mentioned, relating to the same endowment; and a few entries respecting changes in the vicariate. These will be found in the transcript in the places corresponding to those in which they occur in the Register.

The literary usages of the period from 1538 to 1636 are of Verbal forms and interest, as illustrating the final emergence of our language from its Middle English stage, and its gradual settlement under the influence of the development of literature into a fixed modern form; but the very limited vocabulary of a parish register affords little scope for evidence of the changes that were in progress. In the book under notice, the old form "myllne" occurs in 1601 instead of mill': the article a is sometimes used with the apostrophe (a'), which does not appear as the sign of the possessive case: the false construction represented in "Abraham Preist his daughter" is found. But, in the main, the language is that of our own day, with such variances as result from the interchangeability of the letters i and j, i and y, u and v, the use of superfluous letters, and the omission of insignificant ones. It is possible that some old forms were modernized when the transcription of 1598 was written, for though the copyist may have adhered to the original spelling of the names in the early entries, it is not likely that he felt bound to follow closely that of other words.

It should be observed, however, that while the verbal forms of the period were approximately those now in use, the pronunciation was very different. Spelling was then mainly phonetic, sounds being represented by combinations of the letters which most nearly expressed them, according to the pronunciation of the time. Now, since the fashion of speech has undergone continual change during the last 300 years, while the forms of words have remained almost unaltered, many of those letters and combinations have acquired different values, and the sounds they formerly symbolized seem to us quite foreign to them.

These differences have a bearing upon the forms of names as compared with those of the present time, and it may therefore not be out of place to give a few examples of the generally accepted pronunciation of 1600. Long a had the sound of our a in father, the name "Jane being pronounced as if spelt Jahn; ea and long e represented our a in fate, "Jeames" being James as now; "preacher," pracher; and "complete," complate, often with the accent on the first syllable; long i was like our e in she, "give" being geev; the word "son may perhaps be rendered by sn; "one" had the sound of the same three letters in "atone," and "none" corresponded with it; "just was joost;

"daughter" approximated to dahter, gh being sounded as a guttural; "receive was resave; "poor," paur; "join" resembled jine; and "house," hoos; "serve was sarve, and "servant" was sarvant; k in "know," and l in "should " and "would" were sounded; while the l in "fault," and, generally, the c in "perfect," were silent.