French Influence on the English Legal Language of the Chancery in the First Half of the Fifteenth Century

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The main research questions I will address are: What is the French lexical basis of fifteenth century governmental English? To what extent can we still see the contribution of Anglo-Saxon legal terminology in these fifteenth century texts? Are there specific areas of government that are particularly prone to borrowing or retention of traditional terminology? If so, what can this tell us about the mechanics of government? How can fifteenth century Chancery documents help us understand the multilingualism of late Medieval England and vice versa? I will analyse and scrutinise the series of fifteenth century Chancery documents held at the National Archives using key lexicographical resources, namely: the Oxford Dictionary of English (OED), the Middle English Dictionary (MED) and the Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND). I will also use lists of English terms found in Chancery records from Fisher's 1977 study on the relationship between Chancery and Standard English. I will examine the interplay between French and English linguistic practices, an approach which has been successful when used on literary texts (cf. Jefferson and Putter, 2013). It is hoped the project will have a broader view than simply a historical analysis by contributing to revised versions of the OED and AND as the editors Dr Philip Durkin and Dr Heather Pagan have expressed an interest in incorporating findings from this PhD project. It is also hoped this PhD will encourage further work on some of the holdings at the National Archives (hereafter TNA). I hope to shed light on the development of, and influences on, legal language as the legal technolect moved from French to English, principally after the Statute of Pleadings in 1362, which mandated pleading in English in legal cases, and the development of the equity jurisdiction of Chancery. To do this I will create a corpus of relevant texts from within the 15th century timeframe of the project which I will transcribe and analyse in order to determine whether earlier texts demonstrate a higher proportion of French loan words, and examine patterns in the use of these words. The corpus of documents to be examined will be formed from the following series of records held at the National Archives: C1 early Chancery records; C81 Chancery Warrants for the Great Seal; E28 Exchequer Treasury of the Receipt Council and Privy Seal Records; PSO1 Privy Seal Office records; SC8 Special Collections Ancient Petitions. There may be further series of records or orphan documents which will prove useful, which may be uncovered during the course of this PhD. I further propose to study in detail the texts in my corpus to determine whether specific scribes can be identified as the authors of various texts. Palaeographical work will be combined with further analysis and research into the idiolect or lexical differences and similarities in their work (frequency of use of certain loan words or phrases, for example) both to analyse the work of known scribes and name previously unknown scribes. Based on biographical information of known scribes, I will seek to understand more about the training and education of unknown scribes based on common use of language, words and phrases. I intend to produce accurate transcriptions of the texts which form the corpus, as most are still unedited. I will make these transcriptions freely available to TNA and other researchers. Where records are currently uncatalogued, e.g. E28 and some PSO records, I may also catalogue these records for TNA, opening up access to records which are currently hard to identify. I hope eventually to promote an interest in and understanding of medieval government secretariat records to new generations of researchers, historians and archivists, and pass on skills in interpreting and translating Medieval French, Latin and English.