In the session of Parliament which commenced in January 1731, petitions were presented to the Commons from the magistracy of the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire, complaining "that the obliging grand-jurymen at the sessions of the peace to make their presentments in a language which few of them understood; and the suffering in any of the proceedings of the courts of justice, or in any of the transaction of the law, whereby the person or property of the subject may be affected, the use of a language not intelligible, and of a character not legible but by the learned in the law, were great occasions of the delay of justice, and gave room to most dangerous frauds." The ancient practice of using a corrupt Latin for written pleadings had been abolished, with many other legal abuses, in the time of the Commonwealth.

When the Restoration gave back the monarchy, with much of its inherent good, and a considerable portion of its trappings of evil, it was held wise and reverential to restore the old law language. During five reigns the people had borne this mischievous absurdity/ Lord Chancellor King, the son of an Exeter grocer - on of "the people" - saw the necessity of attending to the prayer of the Yorkshire petitions, He directed a Bill to be introduced in the House of Commons to enact - "That all proceedings in courts of justice shall be in the English language." The Bill was passed, after some opposition, such as is always at hand to resist what is dreaded as "innovation". In the House of Lords, the judges, speaking through the Lord Chief Justice, were decidedly against the change - difficulties would arise in translating the law out of Latin into English ; law suits would be multiplied in regard to the interpretation of English words. The Duke of Argyle contended that our prayers were in our native tongue that they might be intelligible, and why should not the laws wherein our lives and properties are concerned. The complaint came from "the people", from magistrates and jurymen.

There never was a period in our history, even in the darkest times, in which the remonstrances of the middle classes against prescriptive abuses were not faithfully seconded by some of an aristocracy that did not stand, as a caste, apart from "the people". The Bill passed ; and the Lords added a clause to provide that records and other documents should be written in a plain legible hand, such as that in which Acts of Parliament are engrossed.

The tenacity with which some minds, even of a high order, cling to custom and precedent, is shown in the lament of Blackstone that the old law Latin was disused. Lord Campbell adds:

"I have heard the late Lord Ellenborough, from the bench, regret the change, on the ground that it has had the tendency to make attorneys illiterate." - C. Knight's Pop. Hist. Of England, vol. vi, p. 65, 1860 J. S.

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Previous to the reign of Edward III, all public documents were written in Norman French, but by the statute 36 of that king, cap. 15, it was enacted that all law proceedings should be conducted in the English tongue, but be entered and enrolled in Latin ; which was observed until the Protectorate of Cromwell, when it was enacted that the English language should alone be used in the public records. This innovation was not observed after the Restoration of Charles II, and Latin continue to be used down to the time of George II, in the fourth year of whose reign, a statute was passed that all law proceedings should from that date be done into English. This was ?ope, as the preamble of the statute sets forth "that the common people might have knowledge and understanding of what was alleged or done for and against them in the process and pleadings, the judgement and entries in a cause."

I do not know of any "act or edict of Parliament especially prohibiting the use of Latin in parish registers," and should doubt if such an act was at any time passed. D. M. STEVENS, Guildford

Notes and Queries Vol. 12 2nd S. (306) Nov 9 1861 Page 375

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