Entry taken from the book The Plantagenets
It may seem surprising, but for almost three hundred years, the English who attended a trial in their country found that judges and lawyers did not speak in the language brought to the country by the Anglo-Saxons and that most English spoke, but in French. .
The origin of this legal custom can be found in the year 1066, when the invasion led by William the Conqueror made the Normans the rulers of England (see the blog entries dedicated to 1066 and Emma of Normandy). Most official positions in England were filled by Normans who came from France and did not speak English. That is why French became the language used in court and in the courts.
It might seem that this would be a purely temporary issue and that it would be resolved quickly. However, it was not. Richard the Lionheart, the prototype of the English king who has a statue at the entrance to Parliament at Westminster, spoke French, although it is possible that he had some knowledge of English; and that he ruled between 1189 and 1199, when the Normans had ruled the country for more than a hundred years.
But perhaps the most surprising case of the permanence of French as the language used in England is that of its use in court. Despite the fact that all judges and lawyers, even descendants of Normans, were already born in England and despite the fact that practically none of the common citizens of Saxon origin spoke French, this language remained the language used in court in England until nothing. more and nothing less than 1362, almost three hundred years after the Norman conquest.
As we say, it was not until 1362 that the English Parliament approved the so-called Pleading in English Act, also known as the Statute of Pleading. This norm declares that the majority of the English did not speak French and that, therefore, they did not understand what was said in court. For this reason, it was established that from that moment, all trials would be held in English and French was no longer used in the courts of England.