Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/305

276 resembles his brother bard, except that he clips the prefix to the Passive Participle, and tries to keep alive the Active Participle in and; Chaucer unluckily stuck to the corrupt ending ing, first seen in Layamon. Lyd&shy;gate and Occleve followed in the steps of the great Londoner; their loving reverence for him atones for much dulness in their song. Even King James I. of Scotland sometimes dropped his Northern speech, and clave to Chaucer as a pattern; though the aforesaid speech was the Court language to the North of the Tweed, and so remained down to the days of the later Stuarts. Toward the end of the Fourteenth Century, a son of Edward III. made what we may call his dying confession in English; and early in the next age our tongue was employed instead of French by Princes, by Cardinals, and by the future hero of Agincourt. Ellis' Letters on English History show us best how the language was being by degrees pared down; its most obsolete form is to be found in the despatches of the Royal officers who were fighting against Glendower. It is curious to mark the differ&shy;ence of the speech of Northern knights, such as Assheton and Waterton, from that of a Somersetshire man like Luttrell. The State papers, drawn up by the men of the Irish Pale, prove that Dublin was now taking London for her pattern in these Agincourt days; Friar Michael of Kildare's speech was a thing of the past.

If we wish to know what was the best, or rather the most fashionable, English spoken in 1432, we must glance at a petition given in by Beauchamp Earl of Warwick