In adapting a Latin alphabet to a Gothic language, the Anglo-Saxon allowed himself more latitude than the Anglo-Norman. We have seen that the new signs þ and ð were Anglo-Saxon.
Now the sounds which these letters represent did not occur in the Norman-French, consequently the Norman-French alphabet neither had nor needed to have signs to express them; until after the battle of Hastings, when it became the Anglo-Norman of England.
Then, the case became altered. The English language influenced the Norman orthography, and the Norman orthography the English language; and the result was, that the simple single correct and distinctive
signs of the Anglo-Saxon alphabet, became replaced by the incorrect and indistinct combination th.
This was a loss, both in the way of theoretical correctness and perspicuity.
Such is the general view of the additions, ejections, changes of power, and changes of order in the English alphabet. The extent, however, to which an alphabet is faulty, is no measure of the extent to which an orthography is faulty; since an insufficient alphabet may, by consistency in its application, be more useful than a full and perfect alphabet unsteadily applied.
[§ 174]. One of our orthographical expedients, viz., the reduplication of the consonant following, to express the shortness (dependence) of the preceding vowel, is as old as the classical languages: terra, θάλασσα. Nevertheless, the following extract from the "Ormulum" (written in the thirteenth century) is the fullest recognition of the practice that I have met with.
And whase wilenn shall þis boc,
Efft oþerr siþe writenn,
Himm bidde icc þatt hett write rihht,