a poet-laureate whose memory is embalmed in the "Dunciad"attributing to Tom Parker, formerly of Leek, in Staffordshire, as brilliant a career at Cambridge as that which he had run in Chancery, wrote— Prophetic Granta, with a mother's joy, Nor could she teach so fast as thou could'st learn. Still sighing echoes the sad sound return; And Cam, with tears, supplies his streaming urn." The entry of Parker's name Occurs once on the books of Trinity College, but beyond the fact of his admission to that college nothing is known of the university career of “the manly boy," whose absence was thus passionately bewailed. In like manner a manufacturer of genealogies traced Lord Eldon to Sir Michael Scott of Balwearie. the wondrous Michael Scott, A wizard of such dreadful fame, That when in Salamanca's cave Him listed his magic wand to wave, The bells would ring in Notre Dame." When one of this servile school of worshippers approached Lord Thurlow with an assurance that he was of kin with Cromwell's secretary Thurloe, the Chancellor, with bluff honesty, responded, "Sir, as Mr. Secretary Thurloe was, like myself, a Suffolk man, you have an excuse for your mistake. In the seventeenth century two Thurlows, who were in no way related to each other, flourished in Suffolk. One was Cromwell's secretary Thurloe, the other was Thurlow, the Suffolk carrier. I am descended from the carrier." Notwithstanding Lord Thurlow's frequent and consistent disavowals of pretension to any heraldic pedigree, his collateral descendants are credited in the "Peerages" with a descent from an ancient family. VOL. II. L FOR CHAPTER LX. LAW-FRENCH AND LAW-LATIN. OR many generations the study of Law-Latin, and of still more barbarous Law-French, exacted much time and perseverance from every young Inns-of-Court man who was bent on qualifying himself for practice in Westminster Hall. No circumstances of the Norman Conquest more forcibly illustrate the humiliation of the conquered people than the measures by which the invaders imposed their language on the public courts of the country, and endeavoured to make it permanently usurp the place of the mother-tongue of the despised multitude; and no fact more signally displays our conservative temper than the general reluctance of English society to relinquish the use of the French words and phrases which still tincture the language of parliament and the procedures of Westminster Hall, recalling to our minds the insolent domination of a few powerful families who occupied our country by force, and ruled our forefathers with vigorous injustice. Frenchmen by birth, education, sympathy, William's barons did their utmost to make England a new France; and for several generations the descendants of the successful invaders were no less eager to abolish every usage which could remind the vanquished race of their lost supremacy. Not content with the possession of her soil, from which they extracted vast wealth, and of her people, whom they reduced to pliant vassals or wretched slaves, the Norman aristocracy required the destruction of England's language and traditions. French became the language of parliament and the council-chamber. It was spoken by the judges who dispensed justice in the name of a French king, and by the lawyers who followed the royal court in the train of the French-speaking judges. In the hunting-field and the lists no gentleman entitled to bear coatarmour deigned to utter a word of English: it was the same in Fives' Court and at the gambling-table. Schoolmasters were ordered to teach their pupils to construe from Latin into French, instead of into English; and young men of AngloSaxon extraction, bent on rising in the world by native talent and Norman patronage, laboured to acquire the language of the ruling class and forget the accents of their ancestors. The language and usages of modern England abound with traces of the French of this period. To every act that obtained the royal assent during last session of parliament, the queen said "La reyne le veult." Every bill which is sent up from the Commons to the Lords, an officer of the lower house endorses "Soit bailé aux Seigneurs ;" and no bill is ever sent down from the Lords to the Commons until a corresponding officer of the upper house has written on its back, "Soit bailé aux Communes." With still more comical fidelity to precedents, on the meeting of every new parliament the peers appoint triers and receivers of petitions for Gascony, the appointment of the said triers and receivers being regularly entered in Norman-French in the archives of the house. Thus, under date Aug. 24, 1841, appears in the "Lords' Journal" the following entry:-"Les Recevours des Petitions de Gascoigne et des autres terres et pays de par la mer et des isles. "Le Baron Abinger, Chief Baron de l'Exchequer de la Reyne. "Messire James Parke, Chevalier. "Messire John Edmund Dowdeswell, Ecuyer. "Et ceux qui veulent delivre leur Petitions les baillent dedans six jours prochainement ensuivant. "Les Triours des Petitions de Gascoigne et des autres terres et pays de par la mer et des isles. "Le Duc de Somerset. "Le Marquis d'Anglesey. "Le Viscount Torrington. "Le Baron Campbell. "Tout eux ensemble, ou quatre des scigneurs avant-ditz, appellant aut eux les serjeants de la Reyne, quant sera besoigne, tiendront leur place en la chambre du Chambellan."* In like manner our parochial usages, local sports, and domestic games continually remind us of the obstinate tenacity with which the Anglo-Saxon race has preserved, and still preserves, the vestiges of its ancient subjection to a foreign yoke. The crier of a country town, in any of England's fertile provinces, never proclaims the loss of a yeoman's sporting-dog, the auction of a bankrupt dealer's stock-in-trade, or the impounding of a strayed cow, until he has commanded, in Norman-French, the attention of the sleepy rustics, who would be strangely puzzled were they told that the crier's "O yes! O yes!" was French, and that John Bull, in times past-something further past than the days of Billy Pitt and old Boney— had bowed his stubborn head to the frog-eaters. The language of the stable and the kennel is rich in traces of Norman influence; and in backgammon, as played by orthodox players, we have a suggestive memorial of those Norman nobles, of whom Fortescue,† in the De Laudibus' observes: "Neither had they delyght to hunt, and to exercise other sportes and pastimes, as dyce-play and the hand-ball, but in their own proper tongue." In behalf of the Norman noblesse it should be borne in mind that their policy in this matter was less intentionally vexatious and insolent than it has appeared to superficial observers. For *Vide Campbell's "Lives of the Chancellors," vol. i. 221, 4th ed. Fortescue's remarks on Law-Latin and Law-French deserve especial attention :"In the universities of England, quod the chancelour, sciences are not taught but in the Latine tongue; and the lawes of that land are to be learned in three severall tongues to wit, in the English tongue, the French tongue, and the Latine tongue. In the English tongue, because that lawe is most used and longest continued amongest the Englishmen. In the French tongue, because that after the Frenchmen, under William the Conquerour of England, had obteined the land, they suffred not their men of law to plead their causes, but in the tongue which they knew, and so do all the men of law in Fraunce, yea in the court of parliament there. Likewise the Frenchmen, after their comming into England, received not the accompts of their revenues but in their owne language, least they should be deceived therein. Neither had they delyght to hunt, and to exercise other sportes and pastimes—as dyce, dyceplay, and the hand-ball-but in their owne proper tongue. Wherefore, the Englishmen, by much using of their company, grew in such a perfectnesse of the same language, that at thys day in such playes and accomptes they use the French tongue. And they were wont to plead in French, till by force of a certaine statute that matter its object it had the personal convenience of the conquerors, rather than the degradation of the conquered. It was scarcely to be expected-scarcely even to be wished-that the barons and persons of condition surrounding them should permit the proceedings in courts of justice to be carried on in a language of which they were totally ignorant. In the great majority of causes the suitors were Frenchmen; and it was just as reasonable that they should like to understand the arguments of their counsel and judges, as it is reasonable for suitors in the present day to require the proceedings in Westminster Hall to be clothed in the language most familiar to the majority of persons seeking justice in its courts. If the use of French pleadings was hard on the one Anglo-Saxon suitor who demanded justice in Henry I.'s time, the use of English pleadings would have been equally annoying to the nine French gentlemen who appeared for the same purpose in the king's court. In like manner the French nobles, feeling the inconveniences of a state of things in which the aristocracy spoke one tongue and the people another, naturally preferred to throw on the inferior race the trouble of learning a new language. It was greatly to be desired that the two races should have one common language; and common sense ordained that the tongue of the one or the other race should be adopted as the national language. Which side therefore was to be at the pains to was much restrayned. But it could never hitherto be wholly abolyshed, as well by reason of certayne termes which pleaders do more properly expresse in French then in Englyshe, as also for that declarations upon originall writs cannot be pronounced so agreeably to the nature of those writtes as in French; and under the same speeche the fourmes of such declarations are learned. Moreover, all pleadings, arguings, and judgments passed in the kinge's court, and entered into bookes for the instruction of them that shall come after, are ever more reported in the French tongue. Many statutes also of that realm are written in French. Whereof it happeneth that the common speech now used in Fraunce agreeth not, nor is not lyke the French used amonge the lawyers of Englannde, but it is by a certein rudenesse of the common people corrupt. Which corruption of speech chanceth not in the French that is used in Englannde, for so much as the speech is there oftener written than spoken. Now, in the third of the said three tongues, which is the Latine tongue, are written all writs originall and judiciall, and likewise all the Recordes of plees in the Kinge's Courtes with certaine statutes also. Wherefore, while the lawes of Englannde are learned in these three tongues, they cannot conveniently bee taught or studied in the universityes, where onlye the Latine tongue is exercised."-Fortescue's De Laudibus, сар. 48. |