ty was extensive. Edward the Confessor issued the following writ in favour of the great church of St. Peter, the cathedral church, at York, referring to lands and rights in Devonshire.
King Edward sends friendly greetings to bishop Leofric and earl Harold and Wada and all my thegns in Devonshire. And I inform you that I have granted to Ealdred the deacon of archbishop Ealdred, the minster at Axminster, and all things lawfully pertaining thereto, with sake and soke, as fully and completely as ever any priest before him had it, as a pious benefaction for St. Peter's minster at York.
Writs in the vernacular help us to understand England as a community accustomed to some sophistication in government from royal courts through shires and hundreds; and this view is supported by ancillary evidence, private fragments of abstracts of law relating to the conditions and ranks of men, the payment of wergelds, the pledges given at marriage ceremonies and guild regulations. Practical administrative rules were framed as a matter of course in the native tongue. Again it might be asked what is so remarkable about this: there is not much point in issuing orders in a language which cannot be understood. What is remarkable is the framing of such regulations, general and particular, on such a wide scale; and also of course the survival of such records.
We come then to the third field, the use of the vernacular in written ecclesiastical record other than law. There is also the practical side of the business, the teaching, the preaching, the framing of guides to doctrine and godly instruction. In relation to language the great Benedictine revival of the tenth century, the work of Saints Dunstan, Ethelwold and Oswald, supported by King Edgar, had unusual results. The continuous history of English monasticism might indeed be held to start with Glastonbury under Dunstan; but the cultural results were distinctive and odd. It was during the second half of the tenth century that Old English, so to speak, came of age in the linguistic sense as a written language. The creation of what is called a Schriftssprache , a language bound by general rules of form, syntax, and orthography was the creation of the late tenth century. This was truly a precocious and remarkable thing in western Europe, and is bound up in a sense with the last of the fields for consideration, that of literature and learning. The names that come first to mind here are those of theologians and homilists, but this may be misleading. The sermons and homilies of Aelfric and Wulfstan exceed in bulk the rest of the prose of the period but the accidental consequences of the preservation of material by use should be taken into account. Aelfric's work was still being used by conscientious clerics in the reign of King John. In fact the material produced was quite wide-ranging, including grammar, colloquies and even a little scientific work. Byrhtferth of Ramsey, for example, wrote a book that was something of a hotchpotch, including much on computations, on the seasons, the signs of the zodiac and the divisions of the day. He even gave advice on how to build a house.
We first of all survey the site of the house and also hew the timber into shape and neatly put together the sills and lay down the beams and fasten the rafters to the roof and support it with buttresses and afterwards delightfully adorn the house.
Byrhtferth wrote in English, but was indeed self-conscious about it and a shade arrogant. He knew a little Hebrew and Greek as well as Latin and occasionally betrays a certain linguistic pride not unfamiliar in those who have learned their Latin well. He tells us in English that the day is divided into 24 hours, 96 points, 240 minutes, 360 parts, 960 moments, 1,440 ostents and 541,440 atoms. With the condescension of the learned he goes on to say:
I take it, o rustic priest, that you will not know what atoms are, but I will make clear the meaning of the word to you. Tomos in Greek is interpreted divisio in Latin and todaelednyss in English:atomos in Greek equals indivisio in Latin.
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