[2] 34 Henry VIII.
[3] Hallam’s “Constitution of England,” i. 8, 4to.
[4] The remains of this feudal pomp and power were visible even at a later period in the succeeding reign, when we find the Earl of Nottingham, in his embassy to Spain, accompanied by a retinue of five hundred persons, and the Earl of Hertford, at Brussels, carried three hundred gentlemen.
[5] “The graziers have assured me of their credit, and some of them may be trusted for a hundred thousand pounds.”—Sir J. Harrington’s Prologue to The Metamorphosis of Ajax.
ORTHOGRAPHY AND ORTHOEPY.
Some of the first scholars of our country stepped out of the circle of their classical studies with the patriotic design of inculcating the possibility of creating a literary language. This was a generous effort in those who had already secured their supremacy by their skill and dexterity in the two languages consecrated by scholars. Many of the learned engaged in the ambitious reform of our orthography, then regulated by no certain laws; but while each indulged in some scheme different from his predecessors, the language seemed only to be the more disguised amid such difficult improvements and fantastic inventions.
A curious instance of the monstrous anomalies of our orthography in the infancy of our literature, when a spelling-book was yet a precious thing which had no existence, appears in this letter of the Duchess of Norfolk to Cromwell, Earl of Essex.
“My ffary gode lord—her I sand you in tokyn hoff the neweyer a glasse hoff Setyl set in Sellfer gyld I pra you take hit (in) wort An hy wer habel het showlde be bater I woll hit war wort a m crone.”