The language used in London was most certainly always English. The better class undoubtedly understood that kind of French which Chaucer called the French of Stratford-atte-Bow. For the nunnery of St. Leonard, Bow, was an ancient Benedictine Foundation, where Anglo-French was taught by the nuns.
The people never spoke any other language than English. The proceedings at the Court of Hustings were in English, so were those of the Folk mote and the Ward mote; the sermons were in English; the miracle plays were in English: the Early English Text Society has unearthed and published a vast mass of Early English, not Anglo-Norman, work, consisting of popular songs, satirical verses, paraphrases of Scripture, rules of Anchorites and monks, and translations.
At Oxford the students translated into French and English alternately, “ne illa lingua Gallica penitus sit omissa.” Chaucer knew Anglo-French, but wrote in English, and he wrote for the better class, not the common people. Gower wrote first in French, then in Latin, and lastly in English. In the year 1362, Parliament was opened by a speech in English: about the same time the Courts of Law were ordered to be held in English.
The custom of the Anglo-Saxon of the present day, who, wherever he is found, imposes his language upon the markets in place of the language of any other trader, no doubt prevailed on the quays and at the port of London then, where the polyglot Babel of the foreign sailors had to be reduced to the common English for the transaction of business.
Skeat has the following remarks on Chaucer’s “French of Stratford-atte-Bow”:—
“There is nothing to show that Chaucer here speaks slightingly of the French spoken by the Prioress, though this view is commonly adopted by newspaper-writers who know only this one line of Chaucer, and cannot forbear to use it in jest. Even Tyrwhitt and Wright have thoughtlessly given currency to this idea: and it is worth remarking that Tyrwhitt’s conclusion as to Chaucer thinking but meanly of Anglo-French was derived (as he tells us) from a remark in the Prologue to the Testament of Love, which Chaucer did not write. But Chaucer merely states a fact, viz., that the Prioress spoke the usual Anglo-French of the English Court, of the English law-courts, and of the English ecclesiastics of the higher rank. The poet, however, had been himself in France, and knew precisely the difference between the two dialects: but he had no special reason for thinking more highly of the Parisian than of the Anglo-French. He merely states that the French which she spoke so ‘fetisly’ was, naturally, such as was spoken in England. She had never travelled, and was therefore quite satisfied with the French which she had learnt at home. The language of the King of England was quite as good, in the esteem of Chaucer’s hearers, as that of the King of France; in fact, King Edward called himself king of France as well as of England, and King John, was, at one time, merely his prisoner. Warton’s note on the line is quite sane. He shows that Queen Philippa wrote business letters in French (doubtless Anglo-French) with ‘great propriety.’ What Mr. Wright means by saying that ‘it was similar to that used at a later period in the courts of law’ is somewhat puzzling. It was, of course, not similar to, but the very same language as was used at the very same period in the courts of law. In fact, he and Tyrwhitt have unconsciously given us the view entertained, not by Chaucer, but by unthinking readers of the present age: a view which is not expressed and was probably not intended. At the modern Stratford we may find Parisian French inefficiently taught: but at the ancient Stratford, the very important Anglo-French was taught efficiently enough.”
Lydgate’s poem called “London Lickpenny,” because the City drinks and absorbs the visitor’s money, contains the most lively picture of the streets of London in the fifteenth century. The title, as Skeat has pointed out, was wrongly conjectured (by Halliwell) to mean “London Lackpenny”:—
“To London once my steps I bent,
Where truth in no wise should be faint:
To Westminster I forthwith went