Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 3.djvu/618

 598 APPENDIX C Jse of French nd English. consistency in lomenclature. people by French names than it is by Latin, but we do know that Latin was never the general speech in England at any period, and we also know that French was the habitual talk of the upper classes from the Conquest till towards the end of the fourteenth century, wherefore the French form of any name is prima facie to be preferred to the Latin: for instance, Edward Ill's mother being French by birth naturally spoke French, as is shown by her often quoted endeavour to save her paramour — " Bel fitz ayez pitie du gentil Mortimer"- — and that Edward III did so himself from his quite unquotable remarks when making over the charge of Scotland to John (de Warenne), Earl of Surrey. Nevertheless that English was in use then is proved by the following. In the Great Wardrobe accounts, Mich. 21 Edw. Ill to 31 Jan. 23 Edw. Ill, instructions are given for the embroidery on the King's tunic of this motto, " Hay Hay the Wythe Swan by Godes Soule I am thy man." And later in the same roll comes " unum doublet pro rege . . . cum dictamine regis Edward I, however anti-French he may have been, never made English the language of his Court. That Henry IV understood all three languages is shown by a letter from him to his Council in 1403, now preserved in the Museum of the Record Office, which begins with a Latin quotation and ends with a holograph postscript in French, and by another letter from him to the Archbishop of Canterbury written about 1409, also preserved at the R.O., which has a holograph postscript in English. The sayings of Kings and Queens are not very good guides to the language of the country, and it is very difficult to be sure what were the ipsissima verba of anyone else.(^) It is true that Freeman states in his Preface to William Rufus that Henry I spoke English familiarly, but J. H. Round has pointed out that this is not justifi- able, owing to the fact that all he is really said to have done is to have expounded the meaning of certain Anglo-Saxon law terms, and this in a document which is gravely suspected of being spurious: no doubt Henry I was a cultivated man, but that is not the point. Nevertheless, even if it be agreed on all hands that we should call English people as far as possible by English names, it is by no means easy to settle what form or variant should be selected. For instance, Henry and Peter were uncommon in the Middle Ages, Harry and Piers being the usual formSjC") and the Editor must himseU plead guilty to some inconsistency in having continued to use in this work, so far as it has gone, the name Henry, while he has altered Peter to Piers. It is not consistent, though it has usually been done, to talk in the same breath of Piers de Gavaston and Peter de Maulay, (^) J. H. Round, however, has drawn the Editor's attention to the very remark- able exclamation attributed by William of Canterbury to the wife of Hugh de Morville (father of one of Becket's murderers), " Huge de Morevile ware ware ware, Litulf heth his swerd adrage " (drawn). Here the language is English but the form Huge is French. (*•) Before Hen. VII the name Henry appeared almost invariably in the forms " Harry " or " Herry " in English Privy Seals, {ex inform. A. E. Stamp).
 * '/ is as it is.'' {ex inform. A. E. Stamp). Again, to go further back,