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282 corruption soon spread Southward. In a letter of 1464, the old Northern Plural of the Present Tense in s is seen; and Robert of Brunne's holy (integrè) is changed into wholie, a wretched corruption which we are still doomed to write. In the same letter, we see far (procul) replacing the old ferre, as it did in the Northern Psalter. I give the Knaresborough wedding formula of 1450: ‘Here I take the. . . to my wedded wife to hold and to have, att bed and att bord, for farer or lather, for better for warse, in sicknesse and in hele, to dede us depart, and thereto I plight the my trouth.’

Salop, like Yorkshire, has had some influence upon Standard English. In 1426, an old blind monk, known as ‘Syr Ion Audlay,’ was compiling his poems, striking at Lollards and worthless priests alike. He lived on the border land between the Northern and the Southern varieties of English speech, as we could tell from a few lines in page 65:

The Salopian shows us that the old lewd (indoctus) was getting its bad modern meaning, when at page 3 he brands the wicked lives of the clergy of his time. He