Sophie Gee

And the significance of the English Pleading Act is that ordinary people

would come into court for whatever reason, to give evidence, to be tried, to have major life decisions made on their behalves.

Ordinary people would be able to understand the language of the court.

So this is a huge shift.

Previously, when the language of the court was French and the written language was Latin, people simply didn't understand what was going on.

So this is a major moment of

kind of common access to the legal system in Britain.

And the other thing to say is that Chaucer's own career, which bridges these monarchs that we've just been talking about, Edward III, Richard II, and then the very beginning of Henry IV, all of those kings, they're all still speaking in Norman French.

It's Henry V, who we know famously again from

Kenneth Branagh, and secondarily from Shakespeare.

Henry V is the first king who makes English the official language.

He takes his monarchical oaths in English, and that's in 1413.

So Chaucer is, which is about 13 years, what it is, 13 years after Chaucer's death.

So Chaucer is living on the cusp between two major pieces of land...

between two major languages, Anglo-French and Middle English.

And he's using Middle English imaginatively.

He's also using it politically.

Yeah, that's a great point.

Yes, and Wycliffe translates the Bible.

And that's one of the sort of central contributions that Wycliffe makes to the sort of lead up to my favourite topic, the Reformation.