The Three Languages of the Common Law
J.H. Baker, Q.C., F.B.A.”
The development of a body of legal ideas is in-
separable from the creation of special legal language.
As a source of technical vocabulary, however, the ver-
nacular has obvious shortcomings; and in any case
medieval English was not sufficiently standardised to
render it suitable for official use. Latin was used for
formal records, and made a permanent mark on the
formalism of the common law, but it had the drawback
that the Romans had used it before; its legal terminol-
ogy was therefore already invested with technical
meaning unsuited to the English context. The solution
was found in a version of medieval Anglo-French
known –
as “law
French”. French, of a kind, was the principal language
of the common law from the thirteenth century until the
seventeenth. Indeed, the majority of English legal
terms are of French origin, though the legal meanings
are purely English and result from the conversion of
ordinary words into terms of art by bilingual lawyers
who used French only as a professional dialect. This
curious circumstance goes some way to explaining
how England managed to produce a distinct system of
law which over the centuries remained more or less
impervious to Roman law influence.
at any rate once it degenerated –
Le d6veloppement d’un ensemble d’id6es 16gales
est insdparable de la cr ation d’un langage 1dgal sp6-
cialis6. Le vemaculaire contient des lacunes dvidentes
comme source de vocabulaire technique et, de toute fa-
von,
‘anglais medi6val n’6tait pas suffisamment uni-
formis6 pour 8tre utilis6 4t des fins officielles en Angle-
terre. Le latin 6tait utilis6 a ces fins officielles eta mar-
qu6 de faqon permanente le formalisme de la common
law, avec l’inconvdnient d’avoir ddjt 6t6 utilis6 par les
Romains et d’Etre ainsi charg6 d’un sens technique in-
adapt6 au contexte anglais.
La solution a done 6t6 l’dlaboration d’un anglo-
frangais m6di6val connu –
t tout le moins dans sa
forme d6g6n6rde –
sous le nom de law French. Le
frangais 6tait la langue principale de la common law du
XIIl
au XVII siicle. Ainsi, la plupart des termes 16-
gaux anglais sont d’origine frangaise, mais leur sens 16-
gal est purement anglais puisqu’il rdsulte de la conver-
sion de mots ordinaires en termes techniques utiliss
par des avocats bilingues se servant du frangais uni-
quement t des fins professionnelles. Cette curieuse cir-
constance
expliquer comment
l’Angleterre a rdussi a dlaborer un syst~me 16gal dis-
tinct plus ou moins impermdable It l’influence du droit
romain au fil des sicles.
sert en partie
“Professor of English Legal History, Cambridge. Slightly revised version of a talk given in Mont-
real on 12 September 1996 under the auspices of the Selden Society (Canada) and the Faculty of Law
of McGill University. Since it was composed as a lecture, it is left in the first person.
McGill Law Journal 1998
Revue de droit de McGill
To be cited as: (1998) 43 McGill L.J. 5
Mode de r6fdrence: (1998) 43 R.D. McGill 5
6
MCGILL LAWJOURNAL/REVUEDEDROITDEMCGILL
[Vol. 43
Introduction
I. English
II. Latin
II1. French
1998]
J.H. BAKER – THE THREE LANGUAGES OF THE COMMON LAW
7
Introduction
The history of legal language has sometimes been treated as a field of antiquarian
curiosity peopled by collectors of strange obsolete words or connoisseurs of subtle
shifts of meaning. I have myself dabbled in legal lexicography, and know the delights
of finding and recording words and meanings not to be found in any previous diction-
ary.’ Such basic philology is a necessary handmaid to serious legal history. But the
genius of Maitland showed us that legal language is more important than that? The
development of terms of art is of the essence of legal development, and the common
law could never have become a distinct body of law without its own distinct language
in which to express its con-
–
cepts. And it was Maitland who pointed out the irony that that language was not Eng-
lish. The very Englishness of English law, he quipped, may be attributed to the
strange fact that medieval English lawyers spoke French in court.?
a terminology different from that of ancient Rome –
Before we look more closely at that strange fact, I must say something of the
other two languages used by English lawyers: namely Latin, the language of forms
and records, and English, the vernacular tongue of all English lawyers from the be-
ginning.
I. English
We can begin with English, of which, surprisingly, there is the least to be said.
That is not, of course, because English lawyers did not speak their own language.
English was the mother tongue of all Englishmen after the twelfth century,” and the
Dialogus de Scaccario informs us that by 1179, as a result of intermarriage, “the na-
tions are so mixed that it can scarcely be decided … who is of English birth and who
of Norman.”‘ French, as we shall see, was a learned second language for the educated
classes, allied to Latin but easier to use in everyday speech; it was not the language
which lawyers had learned at their mother’s knee. It is fairly certain that there was no
English legal profession before the thirteenth century, and so from the very beginning
common lawyers were a class bred to speak English. Moreover, even the earliest
common lawyers cannot have insulated their professional work completely from their
mother tongue. Lawyers must have used English to communicate with their clients,
and therefore they must have been able to explain elementary legal matters in English.
‘See J.H. Baker, Manual of law French, 2d ed. (England: Scholar Press, 1990). See also: J.H.
Baker, “The Origin of Jeofail” (1971) 87 L.Q. Rev. 166; J.H. Baker, “The Pecunes” (1982) 98 L.Q.
Rev. 204.
2 See F.W. Maitland, “Introduction” in YearBooks I & 2 Edward 11 (17 Selden Soc., 1903) at xxxiii-
lxxxi.
3 See ibid. at xxxvi.
‘ See W. Rothwell, “The Role of French in Thirteenth-Century England” (1975-76) 58 Bull. John
Rylands Library 445.
at 53.
-R. FitzNeale, Dialogus de Scaccario, trans. C. Johnson (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1950)
MCGILL LAW JOURNAL / REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
[Vol. 43
I suspect they also used the language when speaking to each other out of court. Trials
must have been conducted in English, even if some of the formalities were in French
or Latin. There is good reason to think that formal documents (such as the articles of
the eyre, and indictments) were transposed from Latin or French into English when
the clerk read them out in court; had they not been, the proceedings would have been
reduced to farce. I shall return later to the prevalence of French for professional pur-
poses. But what was the influence of English on legal vocabulary?
Because the law cannot be hermetically sealed from laymen, a number of English
words have survived which describe legal and political institutions (for example,
KING, LORD, SHERIFF), concepts (for example, LOAN, SALE, THEFT) and even common
procedures (for example, WRIT,’ [plea of] NOT GUILTY). Words such as BuY and SELL,
GIVE and TAKE, LEND and BORROW, HAVE and HOLD, WILL and BEQUEATH, or STEAL,
are as necessary to a layman’s vocabulary as to a lawyer’s and have always been
common to both classes. Here the use of a French alternative –
for instance,
PURCHASE, DONATE, DEVISE, or commit LARCENY –
adds formality but does not
change the substance.
A few, and only a very few, English legal and administrative terms were so un-
translatable that they were adopted into French and Latin: for example, OUTLAW (L.
utlagare, utlagatus), ALDERMAN (L. aldermannus), GAVELKIND (L. gavelikenda),
HUNDRED (L. hundredum), WiTHERNAM (L. withernamium). Most English words had
an exact French equivalent, and in a few cases, surprisingly few, the words have re-
mained genuinely interchangeable to this day. I doubt whether even a fanatical purist
would seek to draw a distinction between SHIRE and COUNTY, OWNERSHIP and
PROPERTY, SELLER and VENDOR, BEQUEST and LEGACY. There are even a few some-
what odd partnerships where we regularly use an Anglo-Saxon noun but a French
adjective (for example, KING-ROYAL, SHERIFFL-VISCONTIEL); or an Anglo-Saxon verb
but a French noun (for example, TO OWE-a-DEBT).
On the other hand, most of the technical legal words used by the Anglo-Saxons
disappeared in early medieval times and rapidly became very obscure. Ironically, our
first law dictionaries are not of Latin or French but lists of obsolete English words
used for different kinds of franchise (such as GRITHBRECHE, HAMSOCN,
INFAN-
GENETHEOF and FLEMENEFREMTH) –
lists first made in the thirteenth century, with
the explanations in French.! These were words still found in Anglo-Saxon charters
which might be of contemporary importance, but evidently no one any longer knew
the meaning save by professional study.
Even at a less esoteric level, the survival of English legal words has been the ex-
ception rather than the rule, and is largely confined to words which were familiar in
everyday speech. It is hardly surprising that BuY and SELL should have replaced
6 Here the French word brief has acquired an entirely different sense: in England, the breviate of a
case for the instruction of counsel, in America the breviate of an argument for the instruction of a
court. It has, however, survived in Scotland as brieve.
‘ See J.H. Baker, A Catalogue of English Legal Manuscripts in Cambridge University Library
(Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1996) at xxxvi, 62 [hereinafter Catalogue].
1998]
J.H. BAKER – THE THREE LANGUAGES OF THE COMMON LAW
9
ACHATER, EMER and VENDRE, even for legal purposes, since lawyers had continued to
use the ordinary English words and did not develop a special sense. It is worth noting,
however, that some apparent survivals of English represent deliberate reversion to a
different language in order to escape a special sense which had developed in legal
French.
A good example is MANSLAUGHTER, which in purely linguistic terms must be the
exact equivalent of HOMICIDE. However, it is not a word that we find in the law books
as a term of art until about 1500. It was introduced to distinguish a class of homicides
that were not murder.’ Previously the French term CHAUD MELtE or CHANCE MEDLEY
had been used, since most non-murdrous killings arose from hot blood and sudden
quarrels. But the verbal confusion between heated (chaud) and sudden (chance) fights
shows the impreciseness of the notion, which did not in any case include reckless
killing. Manslaughter performed the trick very well, albeit at the cost of losing its
natural equivalence with homicide. Thus the French word HOMICIDE became the ge-
nus, while the Anglo-Saxon words MANSLAUGHTER and MURDER represented two of
its species. Here, then, we have an English word bearing a narrower, more technical
meaning than the law French.
The opposite happened in more recent times with the word THEFt. Lawyers had
long used the word LARCENY for felonious stealing, and it had become a very techni-
cal concept involving asportation ‘with force and arms. When the old law was re-
placed by the Theft Act 1968,” the draughtsman decided to abandon the French word
completely and resort instead to the Anglo-Saxon THEFT. It was not linguistic chau-
vinism. The French word was here deliberately killed off in the hope that the technical
concepts of asportation with force would die with it. The draughtsman also introduced
the non-technical French word DISHONESTY to avoid confusion with older words such
as deceit and fraud, which had also become overlain with technicality.” Incidentally,
the same legislation did away with the old meaning of BURGLARY, as a nocturnal of-
fence, since it was thought that in an age of electricity the nocturnal element no longer
served a meaningful purpose.” But here I stray into philological mists: whether
BURGLARY is French or English might be a good moot-case.
Another interesting example of an English technical term is TRUST. It is found in
the year-book period, though usually translated into French as confiance or confi-
dence, in the context of uses of land. Its philological value was probably in providing
the counterpart concept to the use: the feoffor PUT HIS TRUST in the feoffee, who then
HELD TO THE USE of the beneficiary. It is the act of trusting which generates the use.
(Compare sale and purchase, or debt and credit, as words for the same transaction
viewed from each side.) In the seventeenth century, trust prevailed over use as the
‘The word “murder” itself has a complex earlier history: see B.R. O’Brien, “From Morbor to Mur-
drum: The Preconquest Origin and Norman Revival of the Murder Fine” (1996) 71 Speculum 321.
9 Theft Act 1968 (U.K.), 1968, c. 60.
“0 The statute uses the adverb “dishonestly”, ibid., ss. 1-2.
” IbidL, s. 9. There is no affront to language here, since there is nothing nocturnal inherent in the
word “burglary”.
MCGILL LAW JOURNAL/REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
[Vol. 43
word for the equitable estate because of the Statute of Uses 1535 which had executed
uses and turned them into legal estates; it was convenient to have a word to describe
equitable estates which were not executed by the statute, and the Anglo-Saxon came
readily to hand.’2 Why trust was preferred to the French word confidence is less obvi-
ous, though in modem law confidence has come to mean something quite different. A
possible explanation is that the English word lent itself more readily to Frenchifying:
we find cestuy que trust and then (in the seventeenth century) trustee. I suppose fi-
anci would have done, but that is another word which came to have a special mean-
ing in English (I believe not until the nineteenth century).
Thus, although the English language has contributed some terms of art to the law
of England, in most instances it has done so in a subsidiary or secondary way where
an older French term has outlived its original purpose. There were once English
counterparts for many other legal terms which we now know only in their French
forms (for example, BOTE for estover, now found only in composite words such as
HOUSEBOTE and FIREBOTE; DOOM for judgment; GRITH for sanctuary; TALE for count;
BEHOOF for use, found in conveyances down to 1925). In the Bodleian Library there
is even an English translation, made around 1300, of our earliest treatises on com-
mon-law procedure.” Why anyone should have made such a translation is unclear,
and the manuscript has not yet received the attention it deserves. It will provide many
new finds for the lexicographers. But in terms of legal history it can only be viewed
as a curiosity, an aberration which had no effect on the development of legal lan-
guage. English was not the primary or even the secondary language of English law.
II. Latin
apart from an interval in the 1650s –
Latin is a different story. It was from the outset the language of record of the
common-law courts. Until 1731 –
this was a
requirement not merely of taste and tradition but of strict law, because judgments
could be reversed if English had intruded improperly into the record.” I say improp-
erly, because English could be (and indeed had to be) recorded when it was part of the
res gestae: for instance, if a document was proffered and set down verbatim, or if de-
famatory words were quoted verbatim. But the formal minutes of the court’s own
proceedings, including the pleading and verdict, had to be in Latin. And by 1530, at
2 Statute of Uses, 1535 (U.K.), 27 Hen. VIII, c. 10.
,3 Oxford, Bodl. Lib. MS. Rawlinson B. 520.
“36 Edw. III, stat. 1, c. 15, as interpreted by the courts, see text accompanying note 70. The inter-
regnum change was made by a statute of 22 November 1650: Acts and Ordinances of the Interreg-
nwn, vol. 2, ed. by C.H. Firth & R.S. Rait (London: H.M. Stationery Off., 1911) at 455. That was
treated as void at the Restoration of Charles II (1660). The final change to English in 1731 is noted
below, at note 26.
1998]
J.H. BAKER – THE THREE LANGUAGES OF THE COMMON LAW
11
the latest, the King’s Bench would reverse the judgment even of a borough court if
the record slipped into the vernacular.”
Latin just outlived French for legal purposes, since by 1731 few if any lawyers
still used law French for their notes. Latin had also preceded French as the language
of legal literature, the language of Glanvill,” Bracton,” and Hengham,” and in fact
there are no English law books written in French until about 1260. Nevertheless, the
extent to which the vocabulary of English law benefited from Latin was surprisingly
limited; surprising not merely because Latin was the language of all records, but also
because there was a pre-existing legal vocabulary of considerable sophistication cre-
ated by the jurists of ancient Rome. As we all know, there are many Latin phrases
which have continued in use. The most specific of them are the names of writs and
procedures which are signalled by particular words and phrases: for instance, the
writs of habeas corpus, mandamus, certiorari, fieri facias; the plea of non estfactum
or the nolle prosequi; and procedures such as nisi prius or tales. The shorthand effect
of such phrases is considerable, and their authenticity as legal terms is proved by the
pronunciation which lawyers have preserved. In so far as they represent substantive
ideas, they are ideas attached to technical procedures. Thus, habeas corpus may now
be the heading for a body of law about the protection of personal liberty; but it began,
as the words suggest, in a procedure for moving prisoners around. These terms have
no English or French equivalents, because they indicate procedures which were
thought of primarily in terms of the written document or record in which the words
occurred (in Latin) rather than in abstract concepts.
Latin might have been adaptable to conceptual use as well, if it had remained the
language of common-law literature for another century or two, or if it had been the
language of legal argument. But if that had happened there would have been a con-
stant danger of confusion with Roman law, perhaps of unconscious reception of Ro-
man law. If English lawyers used a Latin term which already had a thousand years of
legal history behind it, how much of that history were they obliged to adopt and how
far could they escape from it without causing confusion?
The authors of Glanvill and Bracton encountered this difficulty, and in some
places explicitly grappled with it. Thus, in discussing dos, Glanvill carefully distin-
guishes two different meanings: that given
to the word in common parlance
(vulgariter) and that given to it by Roman law (secundum leges romanas).” In English
it is the distinction between dower and dowry; but preserving the distinction in Latin,
‘- Heth v. Stokephorte (1530) Public Record Office, KB 27/1077, m. 28; printed in J.H. Baker, ed.,
The Reports of Sir John Spelman, vol. 2 (94 Selden Soc., 1978) 302 at 303-04 [hereinafter Spelman,
vol. 2] (error from Totnes, Devon; judgment reversed by King’s Bench).
‘ G.D.G. Hall, ed., The treatise on the laws and customs of the realm of England commonly called
Glanvill (Great Britain: Nelson, 1965).
‘7 G.E. Woodbine, ed., Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England, trans. S.E. Thorne
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968-77) [hereinafter Bracton].
S W.H. Dunham Jr., ed., Radulphi de Henghan Summae (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1932).
Supra note 16 at 58ff., 69ff.
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[Vol. 43
which had but one word, required circumlocution and risked confusion. Bracton in-
deed falls into the trap.” The writer seems to assume that his readers will only use dos
according to the English usage, as indicating dower; and yet his love of learning leads
him to interpolate some canonical learning on dos profectitia and dos adventitia
which requires a mental leap to the other kind of dos, dowry. Having declared in one
place that dos is of two kinds (apparently quoting from Raymund de Pefiafort), he has
to add in the English meaning as a third, by way of afterthought.’ Legal Latin was
therefore a drawback, perhaps even more so to readers at a distance of seven hundred
years. ‘ In other places, the author of Bracton compares Latin and English concepts in
a potentially confusing way, when adding glosses derived from Roman law to practi-
cal accounts of current practice in the English courts. His servus is probably a Roman
slave rather than a villein, though Roman law knew no such distinction; likewise his
possessio was not seisin, his tutela not wardship, his stipulatio something remote
from a covenant or bond. When he uses these classical words he seems to be making
a comparison with older law rather than borrowing doctrine still directly applicable,
or mistaking English law. He and his readers knew well enough that Englishmen did
not make contracts with the words spondes? spondeo23 (though perhaps, if they did,
the result would be binding). Therefore when he writes of English bonds he uses the
word obligatio, though the word also has to serve for informal contracts.” He knew
that villeins were not slaves in the Roman sense, and he uses elsewhere the modem
Latin nativus and villenagium. He realised that possessio would not stand for seisin,
and so seisina occurs throughout. Thus the solution in Bracton, which reflected the
Latin of the writs and plea rolls used in daily practice at that time, was to abandon
classical Latin legal vocabulary and make new Latin words from the English or
French of the courts.
In the first fourteen folios of Bracton, I noted the following non-classical terms
of art: WAYNAGIUM, VILLENAGIUM, CHEVAGIUM, SOCAGIUM, HOMAGIUM, MARI-
TAGIUM, WAYVIUM; TENEMENTUM, FEOFFAMENTUM, FEODI FIRMA, and the corre-
sponding FEOFFATOR, FEOFFATUS, FIRMARIUS and DIMITTERE AD FIRMAM. Alongside
the classical vindicatio and interdictum, we find the Anglo-Norman ASSISA and
WARANTIZARE. These are all Latin neologisms, taken from vernacular speech. How-
ever, the creation of new Latin words stopped short at an early stage, after which the
courts would reject Latin words which they could not find in dictionaries. Linguistic
20 See supra note 17 at 265-81 (vol. 2) and 357-412 (vol. 3). It is now widely accepted that Henry
de Bracton was not the author of this treatise.
2 See ibid. (vol. 2) at 266 (“Et dotis species sunt dux, alia profectitia, alia adventitia … Item fit do-
natio propter nuptias, quod sponsus dat sponse ad ostium ecclesime… Et hoc proprie dicitur dos mu-
lieris secundum consuetudinem Anglicanam…”).
” It is as well to remember that Bracton is now halfway between ourselves and Justinian.
2 See Bracton, supra note 17 at 285 (vol. 2). In Roman law, a contract could be made by the formal
question (“Do you promise?”) and answer (“I promise”).
24 Ibid at 287.
Ibid at 1-60 (ff. 1-14b of the vulgate edition).
1998
J.H. BAKER – THE THREE LANGUAGES OF THE COMMON LAW
13
purity killed the usefulness of Latin because it could not keep up with the vital vo-
cabulary of legal and social discourse in a changing feudal world.
Latin would remain the language of record until 1731, but it ceased five hundred
years before that to be the language of legal writing or discussion, and therefore its
frozen vocabulary played little part in the development of common-law concepts.
That is not to say that it had no effect on English law. Vocabulary is not everything.
The use of an archaic, formal language to express all allegations and findings of fact
had a profound effect on the way common lawyers thought. Before I say what I think
it was, I will interpolate a few remarks about the practicalities of using Latin for rec-
ord purposes.
The very characteristic of Latin which made it unsuitable for oral use –
the pre-
cision of its grammar – made it ideal for exact statement. By our standards it made it
too ideal, because human slips unrelated to the merits of the case might be fatal.!’ In
the year books for 1400 we read on the same page of two writs being quashed, one
because mundare (to clear) was carelessly written mumdare (with eight minims in-
stead of seven), a word which had no meaning, and the other because the writ said
pone per vadium Johanni (in the dative) rather than Johannem.’ A few years later a
writ of forgery was quashed because the clerk forgot about deponent verbs and wrote
inaginavit instead of imaginatus est.” Even Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, learned author
of the Novel Natura Brevium, was caught out in 1532 when he brought a writ con-
taining a grammatical error; and in 1571 Dyer reported (perhaps with wry amuse-
ment) that Sir Anthony Cooke, former classical tutor to King Edward VI, was furious
when his writ of entry sur disseisin was quashed for a grammatical error.2 Usually a
bad writ could be amended, though even when it could not – as in Cooke’s case –
the plaintiff could buy a new one. On the other hand, errors in stating facts could not
be amended. Therefore if the Latin had a meaning other than the one intended, the
fault was incurable. A rather ludicrous example occurred in 1667, when an uphol-
sterer brought an action for the price of four painted hangings, which his lawyer ren-
dered as quatuor pictas pellices (apparently a slip for pellicule). A pellex, however,
was not a piece of upholstery but a prostitute. The court exploded with indignation,
26 English was introduced by the statute 4 Geo. II, c. 26. The 1731 statute was repealed by the Civil
Procedure Acts (Repeal) Act, 1879 (U.K.), 42 & 43 Vict., c. 59, but without reviving the use of Latin.
‘ For more on false Latin, and neologism, see James Osborn’s Case (1613), 10 Co. Rep. 130a at
133a, 77 E.R. 1123 at 1129.
‘ YB. Mich. 2 Hen. IV, pl. 36 and 39, fol. 8.
SY.B. Mich. 11 Hen. VI, pl. 5, fol. 2.
3 [A. Fitzherbert], La novel natura brevium (London: Thomas Berthelet, 1534). For the authorship
of this treatise, see Spelman, vol. 2, supra note 15 at 86, n. 2.
” Fitzherbert v. Welles (1532) in J.H. Baker, ed., The Reports of Sir John Spelman, vol. 1 (93
Selden Soc., 1977) at 15 [hereinafter Spelman, vol. 1].
32 Cooke v. Wotton (1571) in J.H. Baker, ed., Reports from the lost Notebooks of Sir James Dyer,
(109 Selden Soc., 1993) at 202.
MCGILL LAW JOURNAL/REVUE DE DROIT DE McGILL
[Vol. 43
and ruled that, since a contract for painted whores was illegal, the plaintiff could not
recover.3
A more extreme example occurred in 1533, when the mistake of a single letter in
a Latin word saved a man’s neck?’ One Rogers was indicted for murder by a coro-
ner’s inquest on the view of the body of one Thomas Pheyse, beginning quod quidam
Thomas Pheyse in pace domini regis existens” instead of quod quidem Thomas. Since
quidam Thomas (“a certain Thomas.. .”) might have been anyone called Thomas
Pheyse, and not the Thomas Pheyse on whose death the inquest was sitting, the in-
dictment was quashed; a coroner’s jury could not indict someone for a death other
than the one they were investigating. Of course the draughtsman meant quidem, but
that is not what he wrote. There is no reason to suppose that Rogers had not murdered
Pheyse, and so that small slip alone may have saved him from the gallows. We can
only guess at whether the court had some other reason for helping him. There is other
evidence that courts would sometimes seize on trivial errors in order to discharge
prisoners whose convictions were felt to be unsafe for reasons not appearing on the
record.” Even if that were the explanation, the coherence of the law did not benefit
from such fine attention to precision.
The dangers of false Latin were all the greater when lawyers were not themselves
fluent in the language. They did not all have the scholarly Latinity of Sir Thomas
More. As early as 1381, Cavendish CJ. admitted that he and his brethren were more
at home in French than in Latin.” And in 1536 Richard Morison complained of law-
yers who could not even draw deeds in Latin, but were forced to draw them in French
and cause their clerks to turn them into Latin. 8 The plea rolls were controlled not by
the Bar but by the various clerks of the courts, men brought up as attorneys and un-
der-clerks rather than in the universities, men skilled in the forms of the law but not in
Latin literature. Over the centuries they had produced their own Latin dialect, and it
worked very well as a means of attaining the purpose for which it was developed. As
we have seen, it was not grammatically corrupt in the way that later law French be-
came corrupt, although difficulties could sometimes be concealed by abbreviations at
the end of words. But it had its own constructions and a relatively narrow vocabulary.
Perhaps a classicist without legal training could make some verbal sense of the plea
rolls, but not much real sense of what was going on. On the other hand, a lawyer who
33 Gardner v. Fulforde (1667) 1 Lev. 204,83 E.R. 369.
R. v. Rogers (1531-33) KB 27/1081, Rex m. 1 d, Spelman, vol. 1, supra note 31 at 52.
35 “that a certain Thomas Pheyse, being in the peace of the lord king…”.
3
1 J.H. Baker, “The Refinement of English Criminal Jurisprudence, 1500-1848” in L.A. Knafla, ed.,
Crime and Criminal Justice in Europe and Canada (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press,
1981), reprinted in J.H. Baker, The Legal Profession and the Common Law (London: Hambledon
Press, 1986) at 307.
3″Archaeologia, vol. xi at 55.
38 “A Persuasion to the King that the Law of this Realm should be in Latin” (c. 1536), Brit. Lib.
Royal MS. 18 A. 50, at if. 9v-10r, quoted in Spelman, vol. 2, supra note 15 at 29.
1998]
J.H. BAKER – THE THREE LANGUAGES OF THE COMMON LAW
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has learned Latin chiefly from the plea rolls would make little headway with More’s
Utopia,9 let alone classical poetry.
We might note in passing that the main philogical difficulty confronting these
clerks arose from the obvious fact that their world was not that of ancient Rome.
What was the Latin for a petticoat, or a tennis court? Professional linguists were not
much help.’ Had the courts been strict about vocabulary it might have placed serious
limitations on the scope of the common law. But in practice they allowed untranslat-
able words to be rendered by using the nearest generic Latin word followed by an
Anglice vocatus and the English word. In 1685 a book was published for the guidance
of clerks containing what purported to be the correct Latin terms for all kinds of new
fangled objects such as a football, a corkscrew (cochlea suberea, which seems rather
to mean a screw made of cork), or spatterdashes (lutosce caligce amphibularos ex
panno vulgarifacte).!’ If this book was a safe guide, it shows that classical Latin vo-
cabulary was not exercising too restricting an influence on the work of the courts.
But I am afraid I have erred and strayed from my point. These translation diffi-
culties are not the “profound effect” which I mentioned, though there is a connection.
The dangers of experimentation, and the discipline of the clerks in keeping to their set
forms, besides sheer common sense, encouraged an adherence to precedent. This was
true not only of general writs and pleas, where the lawyer or clerk was virtually filling
up a form, but also of most special actions and pleas, which made heavy use of stan-
dardised components. It was safest to follow hallowed phrases and not to attempt
freehand statements of fact. Lengthy pleas of title, for instance, were not without a
kind of mathematical elegance, being made up from standard-form elements fitted
into a well-known structure.
The formulaic nature of the plea rolls made the common law very different from
the law of the Chancery and conciliar courts, where the facts gushed out in the mother
tongue.” The courts of law were not considering real facts, which they could not
know, but allegations of fact as formulated in the Latin of the plea rolls. What was not
in the Latin was not in issue and was irrelevant. What was in the Latin was to be taken
as fact, for the purpose of the case, unless it was denied and found untrue by a jury.
Hence the importance of correct Latin. If two people were indicted for felonious ab-
duction, and the count said cepit et abduxit (in the singular), both had to be discharged
because the court could not know which of the two defendants was being accused of
the offence.’3 But, far more important than this, stereotyped formulae could prevent
questions of law from arising at all. If all direct personal injuries were expressed as
” T. More, Libellus vere aureus . . . de optino reip. statu deque nova Insula Utopia (Louvain,
1516). The Latin version was aimed at a scholarly, humanist audience. It achieved a much wider
popularity after its first translation into English in 1551.
‘ For example, in 1494 the grammarians were unable to tell the court the correct Latin for fine gold:
YB. Hil. 9 Hen. VII, pl. 8, fol. 16.
4″ See J.H. Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History, 3d ed. (London: Butterworths, 1990) at
103.
2 Or, in the 14th century, in French.
‘3 R. v. Sturgys (1539) KB 27/1111, Rex m. 14, Spelman, vol. 1, supra note 31 at 104.
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being done with swords and staves, so that the plaintiff’s life was despaired of –
and
that was the invariable form in the count for assault and battery –
there could be no
development of the concept of battery, or even of negligence, unless the facts could be
brought out in pleading, and that was only sparingly permitted.” This effect was not
due to Latin as such, but to the use of standard formulae instead of detailed accounts
of the facts at large; but the use of Latin has much to do with the use of formulae in
the old common-law courts of record, in contrast with courts where the proceedings
were in English, the evidence was deposed in writing in English, and the judge was
able (like a jury) to weigh the factual minutiae of every case.”
III. French
Now we come to French, the foremost of the three languages of English law.
Even in the late seventeenth century, a King’s Counsel could state that “lawyer and
law French are coincident; one will not stand without the other.”‘” No English lawyer
could say that today; and yet the legacy of the law French dialect in what we now re-
gard as English legal terminology is so widespread that most English speakers would
not notice it.
To start at the beginning, we still do not know when French started to be used as
the language of oral debate and pleading in the royal courts. Glanvill gives the forms
of counts in Latin (beginning Peto.. .); but it may be that the author was translating
French forms to avoid an inelegant mixture of languages. At any rate, we have no
French texts deriving from the courts before the 1250s. This is at least a century after
the disappearance of ethnic distinctions between Englishmen of Norman origin and
those of pre-1066 stock, and at least a generation after the loss of mainland Normandy
in 1204.
It was an old tradition –
found in Fortescue in the fifteenth century,” and even
earlier –
that the use of French for legal purposes was a result of the Norman con-
quest. For some, including Blackstone, it was a badge of foreign tyranny.” But mod-
em scholarship has shown this to be a myth. No doubt William I and his barons did
not speak English themselves. But they had no wish to make Englishmen speak
French, and did not attempt to do so. Even in the eleventh century we read of Nor-
mans marrying English women who brought up their children to speak English. The
Normans did not use French for official documents. And it is now thought that the
currency of French in courtly circles in early thirteenth-century England was not a
relic of conquest but was rather due to its slightly more recent international recogni-
” See Baker, supra note 41 at 456-59.
, What is said here does not hold true of the ecclesiastical courts, where evidence (in the form of
depositions) was taken down in Latin.
46R. North, A Discourse on the Study of the Laws (London: C. Baldwyn, 1824) at 12.
47 j. Fortescue, De Laudibus Legum Anglie, ed. by S.B. Chrimes (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1942) at 114 (translated below in text accompanying note 72).
” W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 2d ed., vol. 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1766-69) at 317.
1998]
J.H. BAKER – THE THREE LANGUAGES OF THE COMMON LAW
17
tion as the language of learning and diplomacy. Latin, of course, had the same inter-
national currency, but chiefly as a written language; in its high scholarly form it is too
heavily inflected to make it easy to speak. English, on the other hand, would not have
been understood beyond England. It was rather like Dutch or Flemish today; outsiders
are not expected to speak the local language, but to use English –
in Holland you can
even attend some university lectures in English. What is more, in 1200 or 1300, Eng-
lish still had many dialects which might even place it beyond the reach of Englishmen
from other regions. As late as the fifteenth century, Caxton tells a story of a mercer
who went into a shop in Kent and asked in London English for some eggs, only to
emerge deeply offended when the woman in the shop apologized for not being able to
speak French.’9 (Apparently he should have asked for eyeren.) Judges and lawyers
practising at Westminster had to deal with Englishmen from all over the country, and
even at times with foreigners. French gave them the means, without diminishing their
native tongue. But it was not only their language. It was spoken by the king,’ by the
king’s courtiers, and by the clergy, was widely taught and learned by the middle
classes and by merchants, and may not have been unknown to some of the lower
classes!’ It was used for private and state correspondence, and for simple documents
and conveyances. Even the universities permitted its use: Oriel College, Oxford, al-
lowed French to be used at meal times and in private conversation, while Peterhouse,
Cambridge, more grudgingly allowed it “for just and reasonable cause.” 2 English is
not mentioned, and would have been completely unacceptable. The learned clergy,
like lawyers, were supposed to be trilingual.
The “French” of which I speak was not Norman French, but a hybrid dialect with
strong Picard and Angevin influences. It would have been comprehensible to a Pari-
sian, at any rate if correctly pronounced, perhaps more readily than to a Norman.
However, as we all know, the English have never found French pronunciation easy.
There is a fourteenth-century French fable of an English traveller in France who en-
tered an inn and tried to order roast lamb, asking for anel; after much bewilderment
and shrugging of French shoulders, he was served with a succulent young donkey. 3
An added advantage of French in the king’s courts was that it was much closer
than English to the Latin vocabulary of the writs and records. The wording of legal
formulae could be discussed more easily in a romance language derived from Latin
than in a language which had no ready equivalents. Indeed, in the mid-thirteenth-
‘” For the supposedly barbarous speech used in Kent, see N.E Blake, Caxton and his World (New
York: London House, 1969) at 16-22.
” Edward I may have been the first king to speak English: R.M. Wilson, “English and French in
England 1100-1300″ (1943) 28 History 37 at 45.
-” See K. Lambley, The Teaching and Cultivation of the French Language in England (Manchester.
University Press, 1920) 1-25; Wilson, ibid. (for the lower classes see especially 58-60). The Mirror of
Justices (c. 1290) [WJ. Whittaker, ed., The Mirror of Justices (7 Selden Soc., 1893) at 3], contains the
remarkable observation that it was written in French because that was “le plus entendable de la
comun people.”
52Lambley, ibid at 6.
“IJbid. at 21.
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a form they never had in real life –
century educational tract known as Brevia Placitata the writs themselves are set out in
French –
to bring them closer to the ensuing
commentary and disputation (which probably began as lectures in French).’ Ces sunt
les brefs e les contes enromancies is the title in one manuscript.” The late thirteenth-
century tract Modus componendi brevia confirms that, “by the custom of England,”
counts were pronounced “in romanis verbis, et non in latinis,”‘
significantly not
treating English as a possibility.
In the Selden Society edition of Casus placitorum, and in this year’s edition of
Earliest English Law Reports, we now have in print a corpus of law reports and notes
of cases in French stretching back to the 1250s and 1260s.Y This is within fifty years
of the first appearance of a legal profession at Westminster, and the texts therefore re-
veal quite a remarkable linguistic achievement. In no more than half a century, a small
band of pleaders practising in a comer of the king’s palace had created a flexible new
language of their own, a technical language which owed nothing to the ancient Ro-
mans let alone to Anglo-Saxons. Already by 1270 much of the basic vocabulary of
the common law had been settled. It was all derived from French roots, and yet the
meanings were not to be found in the French spoken in France. Moreover, although
some of the most basic terms (such as seisin) were also used in Normandy, most of
the new vocabulary owed nothing to the Normans either.”
Our inventive pleaders spoke in metaphors, using ordinary language to express
emerging concepts.” Verbs are easier to adapt in this way than nouns, and –
as
Maitland pointed out – most of the innovation occurred by investing verbs with new
meanings: for instance, ATITAINDER, CESSER, DEMURRER, DISCLAIMER, ESTOVER,
INTERPLEADER, JOINDER, MERGER, OUSTER, OYER, REJOINDER, REMAINDER, RE-
MITTER, RENDER, REVERTER, TENDER. The infinitives still exist as verbal substantives,
and in all but two instances (estover and oyer) there is also a verbal form still used in
English. None of these terms have any exact surviving English equivalent, though
there were more English equivalents at one time: even as late as the sixteenth century
we hear of dwelling or abiding in law as synonyms for demurring. But, as Maitland
reminded us, those English words represented remainder as well as demurrer.’ The
differentiation between DEMUR and REMAIN was “good technical work” which could
not have been achieved by using the vernacular.
See Baker, Catalogue, supra note 7 at xxxvi, 156.
” Oxford, St John’s College MS. 176, fo. 201r, printed in G.J. Turner, ed., Brevia Placitata (66
Selden Soc., 1951) at 153.
56 G.E. Woodbine, ed., Four Thirteenth Century Law Tracts (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1910) at 162.
” W.H. Dunham, ed., Casus placitorwn (69 Selden Soc., 1950); PA. Brand, ed., Earliest English
Law Reports, vols. I & 2 (111-12 Selden Soc., 1995-96).
“8 A Selden Society editor soon learns that there is little practical assistance to be found in Norman
dictionaries such as Godefroy.
” What follows is heavily reliant on Maitland, supra note 2 at xxxiii-lxxxi, which is still the best
introduction to early law French.
60 Ibid. at xxxviii.
1998]
J.H. BAKER – THE THREE LANGUAGES OF THE COMMON LAw
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The most fruitful words in law are the broadest and vaguest; for example, TORT,
TRESPASS, NUISANCE, DECEIT, DEBT (and in modem times we might add NEGLIGENCE
and REASONABLENESS). It takes many decades, or even centuries, to refine their
meaning for legal purposes; and this is another reason why a language other than the
vernacular helps. The “forgive us our trespasses” of the 1525 translation of the Lord’s
Prayer was certainly not confined to wrongs committed with force and arms against
the king’s peace, or even to wrongs remediable by action on the case.
The process of refinement is so slow that in several cases two quite different
technical meanings might attach to the same word. Here are six examples:
ABATIR: to quash (or be quashed); (se abatir) to intrude.
AVOIDER: to make void (or become void); to avert the effect of a previous
pleading by introducing new matter.
DEPARTIR: to share between coparceners, to partition; to make a departure in
pleading by going back on something alleged earlier.
issuE: issue of the body (descendants); issue in pleading (litiscontestatio); (pl.)
issues from property (rents, profits).
TAMLER: to pronounce a judgment or enact a remedy; to limit an estate; to entail
(i.e. limit an estate in fee tail).
All these words continued to be used also in their original senses: ABATIR is to knock
down; AVOIDER, to remove or evade; DEPARTIR, to go away, to separate; ISSUE, out-
come, offal; TAILER, to cut or fashion, to cut down or dock.
In a few other cases, technical meanings continued to be added down to the Tudor
period. Four examples will suffice:
cONvEYANcE: introductory matter in a plea of written instrument; tracing of ti-
tle from one to another, (perhaps not until the 16th century) an instrument
for transferring title.
ENDOWMEI r assurance of dower, setting out a portion for a vicar;, (perhaps not
until the 16th century) provision of capital for a corporation or charity.
REBtrrER: to repel an action or plea; (not noticed until the 1490s) to reply to a
surrejoinder.
Togr. it is a good question at what stage would it be correct to translate this as
“tort”, in a technical sense, rather than “wrong”, but the answer is probably
not before 1660.
In all these cases, it was of course the latest sense to develop which eventually pre-
vailed over earlier senses.
Another of Maitland’s observations was that lawyers “mediated between the ab-
stract Latin logic of the schoolmen and the concrete needs and homely talk of gross,
unschooled mankind”6 by devising a whole range of new words to describe logical
and argumentative processes: for example, ALLEGE, AVER, ASSERT, AFFIRM, AVOW,
“Ibid. at xxxvii. This prompted his famous remark, “Law was the point where life and logic met.”
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DEMUR, DENY, EXCEPT, PROVE, SUGGEST, SUPPOSE, SURMISE, TRAVERSE. Many of
these have passed into ordinary speech, though in some cases with loss of the more
subtle meanings attributed by lawyers. Yet there are a number of terms in this cate-
gory which were peculiar to legal idiom and did not pass from law French into Eng-
lish, such as:
CHANTER: to find a verdict or office.
CHARGER: to stress, to lay weight upon a point.
CHAsER: to drive counsel to say or do something.
DIRETALENr to talk nonsense.
GiSER EN BOUCm to lie in someone’s mouth (Le. to be a fitting thing for him to say).
The most esoteric phrases of all were the shorthand expressions used by year-book
reporters to indicate particular moves in the game of pleading, such as:
ALPLEAPLEDE etc.: demurrer.
Er ENTANT etc.: joinder in demurrer.
JUGEMENT DE BREF etc.: conclusion to a plea in abatement.
JUGEMENT S ACrON: conclusion to a plea in bar.
PER QUE etc.: prayer of judgment.
PREST etc.: averment.
SANS CEO etc.: traverse.
This seems an appropriate point at which to quit the particular and return to the
general, with a question: when did this curious form of French cease to be spoken by
English lawyers? In answering this question, the law reports do not help; indeed, they
conspire to suppress the truth by continuing to use French when reporting English
speech. Certainly there is an increase in English words and phrases found in the year
books in the middle of the fourteenth century; but that is not proof of a change in the
spoken language, since it might indicate merely a decline in French vocabulary.
Moreover, we know that oral French continued to be used for formal pleading in court
until 1731,2 though latterly it was only “done for form, and unintelligibly,”‘ and for
moots in the Inner Temple –
until 1778.” There
were also certain French forms used at the assizes, such as OYEZ, COUNTEZ, VOUS
the last bastion of legal French –
‘ See North, supra note 46 at 13. He states “when Assizes or Appeals are arraigned, the Armay, that
is, Pannels of Juries challenged or excepted to, it must be done in French; so Counts, Bars, and such
transactions as reach no farther than the Bench and Counsel, with the Officers, and not to the Country
… are to be done in Law French” (J.H. Baker, The Order of Serjeants at Law (London: Selden Soci-
ety, 1984) at 92). An example of 1695 is printed in Order of Serjeants at 420.
R. North, The Life of the Right Honourable Francis North, Baron of Guilford, Lord Keeper of the
Great Seal, 3d ed. (London: W. Clarke & Sons, 1819) at 29.
Probably until 1778: see J.H. Baker, “Introduction” in J.H. Baker & S.E. Thome, Readings and
Moots at the Inns of Court in the Fifteenth Century, vol. 2 (105 Selden Soc., 1989) at lxiv.
1998]
J.H. BAKER – THE THREE LANGUAGES OF THE COMMON LAW
21
AVEZ, SOIT TREIT. ‘ But these were mere standard forms, not free discourse. For the
end of oral argument in French our principal clue is a statute of 1362.”
The statute recited that one of the reasons why people were always breaking the
law was ignorance; the laws, customs and statutes were not commonly known, be-
cause they were pleaded and adjudged in French: “qu’est trop desconue en le dit
realme.” With delightful but apparently unconscious irony, the statute itself was in
French. The remedy ordained was that all pleas pleaded in all courts whatsoever
should (from Hilary term 1363) be pleaded, shewn, defended, answered, debated and
adjudged in the English tongue, but entered and enrolled in Latin.
The statement in the preamble about the decline of French is borne out by con-
temporary sources, and may be attributed to hostilities with France in the time of Ed-
ward IT[. Ranulph Higden, writing at the beginning of the fourteenth century, said that
gentlemen’s children were taught French from an early age, and that schools taught
French next after English; yet his translator (in 1387) reports that French had since
been given up by the grammar schools.” It is no coincidence that English literature
began to flower in this period. The first known deed written in English dates from
1376, and the first letter in English from 1393.”
However, it is difficult to ascertain what effect the statute had in practice, since
there is no change on the face of the law reports, which continue in French until the
seventeenth century. Later writers have suggested that the courts took no notice of so
radical a reform.” It did, after all, take Parliament itself another century to heed its
own point and promulgate statutes in English. The only references to the statute in
decided cases in the law reports are to the proviso concerning the continued use of
Latin. This was meant as a saving –
to stop it being mandatory to make records in
English – but was perversely taken as a statutory requirement that all records should
be in Latin.”
Some passages in the statute could be taken as referring to formal pleadings
rather than argument. Yet it is known that oral pleading, in so far as it was preserved
for court use, for instance counts in real actions, continued to be in French until the
Roger North’s draft Life of Lord Keeper Guilford, Brit. Lib. MS. Add. 32508, fo. 30r.
Supra note 14.
6 See Lambley, supra note 51 at 24. For the fourteenth century, see also: R. Berndt, “The Period of
the Final Decline of French in Medieval England” (1972) 20 Zeitschrift ftir Anglistik und Ameri-
kanistik 341; W. Rothwell, “The Trilingual England of Geoffrey Chaucer” (1994) 16 Studies in the
Age of Chaucer 45.
” See H. Suggett, “The Use of French in England in the later Middle Ages” (1946) 28 Trans. Royal
Historical Soc. (4th ser.) 61.
9See De Laudibus Legum Anglie, supra note 47 at 114; R. Fabyan, The New Chronicles of Eng-
land and France, ed. by M. Ellis (London: F.C. & J. Rivington, 1811) at 476; W.S. Holdsworth, A
History of English Law, 4th ed., vol. 2 (London: Methuen, 1927) at 478 (“it did not effect the purpose
for which it was passed”).
0 See Heth v. Stokephorte (1530), supra note 15; Grisling v. Wood (1588) Cro. Eliz. 85, 78 E.R.
344; Lucas v. Donne (1590) Cro. Eliz. 185,78 E.R. 441.
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statute of 1731 ” The probable answer is that the statute was not interpreted at the
time as referring to pleading, in that technical sense, but was taken as applying only to
oral argument. 1363 may therefore be the date when French ceased to be used for all
but formal purposes in the courts. What lives on in the Oyez of the crier had ceased to
be a language of oral discourse in the reign of Edward H1.
This conclusion is confirmed by a passage –
the most revealing discussion of le-
in chapter 48 of Fortescue’s De Laudibus Legum Anglie. 2 Sir John
gal language –
Fortescue, exiled in France in the 1460s, was explaining to Prince Edward why Eng-
lish law was not taught in the universities. The exact meaning of the passage is so im-
portant that I offer my own translation:
In the universities of England, sciences are taught only in the Latin tongue. But
the laws of the land are learned in three languages – English, French and
Latin. French because, after the conquest by Duke William, the French would
not allow advocates to plead causes except in the language they knew…
Likewise the French would not receive accounts unless they were in their own
language, in case they were deceived. They enjoyed recreations such as hunt-
ing, dicing and ball games, only in their own tongue. And the English, by
mixing in their company, contracted the same habit, so that to this day they
speak French in such games and in accounting. And they were accustomed to
plead in the same language until the usage was restricted by force of a certain
statute: despite which, it has proved impossible to abolish the custom com-
pletely, partly because there are certain terms which pleaders can express more
appropriately in French than in English, and partly because declarations upon
original writs cannot be framed as closely to the nature of the writs as in
French, the language in which the formulae of such declarations are learned.
Also, what is pleaded, disputed and adjudged in the royal courts is reported and
put into books for future learning always in French. Moreover, many statutes of
the realm are written in French.
In consequence of all this, the language of the ordinary French people is not the
same as that used by English lawyers, but is rougher (vulgariter quadam nidi-
tate corrupta). That cannot happen with the French used in England, because it
is more often written than spoken.
In the third language, Latin, are written all original and judicial writs, and
likewise all records of pleas in the king’s courts, and also certain statutes.
This digression by Fortescue makes three incidental points about law French
which are worthy of notice. First, French was the language in which pleadings were
learned: that is, at moots in the inns of court.’3 Second, the statute of 1362 had not
been fully implemented with respect to pleading, in the technical sense of that term,
because declarations –
and presumably other parts of pleading – were still recited
in French. The third and most significant lesson is that argument in court is now in
English; for it is implicit in the statement that the lawyers’ French was “more often
7 Supra note 14.
72De Laudibus LegwnAnglie, supra note 47 at 114, 116.
7′ For the forms used at moots in Fortescue’s time, see Baker, supra note 64 at xlv-lxxiii.
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J.H. BAKER – THE THREE LANGUAGES OF THE COMMON LAW
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written than spoken” (sapius scriptus quam locutus) that the year books of Fortes-
cue’s day were using French to record English speech.
From the linguistic point of view, legal French was in steady decline after 1362,
even if in Fortescue’s opinion (based on a first-hand comparison) the rough French of
France was less pure than the artificial French of Westminster Hall and Lincoln’s Inn.
For nearly three more centuries it was learned by all common lawyers, and was the
language of formal pleading (as opposed to argument) in court and in the inns of
court. Yet to a Frenchman, coming to London from Normandy in 1592, our lawyers’
dialect was wholly foreign:
[law French] may be worthily compared to some old ruins of some fair build-
ing, where so many brambles and thorns are grown that scarcely it appeareth
that ever there had been any house… almost there is no language more far
from the true French than the French of our [sic] laws, there being almost no
word which either by intermingling, or adding, or diminishing, or changing of
a letter into another, they have not altered or corrupted… [and] their pronun-
ciation differeth so much from ours as it is impossible for a Frenchman to un-
derstand them.”
But Delamothe was making the same kind of judgment as those who have criticised
the author of Bracton for not being a better Romanist.75 The lawyer of Coke’s day –
indeed the lawyer of Fortescue’s day, or even Bereford’s – was not pretending to be
a Frenchman. It was said at the time that law French cduld be learned in ten days,7′ or
perhaps even two.’ Certainly there was no formal instruction. Such a course of pri-
vate study obviously could not lead to a highly advanced proficiency in conversa-
tional French, and since it was not professionally necessary to do so it is hardly sur-
prising if lawyers made do with the simplest form of technical dialect. It is said that
even Englishmen were sometimes shocked by the barbarity of inns of court French;
and in Henry VIII’s time several reformers devised schemes to force lawyers and oth-
ers to study good French.7′ But that was a matter of taste and refinement rather than of
legal practicality. The French which lawyers used had long been a technical shorthand
of their own making, and the French of Paris would have been useless to them. Law
French may well have been nothing like the French spoken in France, but it did not
need to be. English lawyers were not trying to impress foreigners, or to foster a pre-
tence of cosmopolitanism. And they were certainly not pretending to be Frenchmen.
74G. Delamothe, The French Alphabet (London: J. Smethwicke, 1639) at 104.
” It is sufficient to refer to F.W. Maitland, “Introduction” to Select Passages from the Works of
Bracton and Azo (8 Selden Soc. 1895) at xiv, xviii, xx. It is now usual to take the more charitable
view that the writer was not professing to be an exact Romanist, and that he either adapted Roman le-
gal ideas and language to English purposes or used them only for comparison and contrast.
” See J. Davies, Le Primer Report des Cases en Ireland (London: Company of Stationers, 1628),
sig. I 2.
See J. Clayton, “Epistle Dedicatory” to Reports and Pleas of Assises at York (London: Ja. Flesher
forW. Lee, D. Pakeman, and G. Bedell, 1651).
” See Spebnan, vol. 2, supra note 15 at 30-32. Good tutors and manuals were certainly available in
England. In fact, the first printed book on French grammar (Palsgrave) was published not in France
but in London, in 1530: see Lambley, supra note 51 at 3.
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It did not matter whether they could remember the correct French for a willow tree, or
a “brickbat which narrowly missed” an assize judge.”‘ Lawyers continued to use their
special language because it had practical advantages thought to outweigh its aesthetic
disadvantages.
By the late seventeenth century, however, the old language was in terminal de-
cline, and hardly any writers still used it for their notes. Roger North K.C. lamented
this as a sign of indifference to true learning:
It is very strange when some that pretend to be students… can scarce make
out the sense of a common French law book. And it is observed such shallow
students never make good lawyers. Nature may make wranglers, as it makes
buffoons, but it is regular study, industry, and thinking, which makes good law-
yers.
so
Elsewhere, he wrote that “the law is scarcely expressible properly in English.”‘” This
law French had in its heyday given lawyers a useful shorthand in which to note legal
arguments. Much more important, however, than this, it had given English law a body
of new terms and concepts which enabled it to develop in its own way and to become
the only system of jurisprudence comparable with that of ancient Rome. This all
brings us back to Maitland’s paradox, which was partly prompted by North’s remarks.
Of all the countries in Europe, the system of jurisprudence which showed the stoutest
nationalism, the least impervious to foreign influence, was that which “was hardly
expressible in the national language.””
See J.H. Baker, “Le Brickbat que narrowly mist” (1984) 100 L.Q. Rev. 544.
North’s draft Life of Guilford, supra note 65. For North’s printed views on law French, see L.G.
Schworer, “Roger North and his Notes on Legal Education” (1959) 22 Huntington Library Qly 323,
at 336-38.
“Supra note 46 at 13.
Maitland, supra note 2 at xxxvi.
