-
Business Communication in English begins in the early 15th
century. Im-petus for using English instead of the previously-used
Latin or French firstcame from the central government, which
encouraged the use of English asa patriotic gesture during the war
against France. Following this lead,writers of business letters
eagerly switched to English but retained thehighly formal letter
writing style of the ars dictaminis. The survivingbusiness letters
from the period show a progressive discomfort with thisstyle
throughout the century and illustrate for us the dangers of relying
onreceived rules in letter-writing.
The Earliest Business Letters in Engiish:An OverviewMalcolm
RichardsonTexas A&M University
ONE OF THE HALLMARKS of a mature academic discipline isthat its
practitioners systematically study its origins and develop-mentfor
only with a knowledge of the past can the present befully
understood. The mature academic discipline I have in mindis
Business Communication, which after years of being the
uglystepsister of many English and Business departments is at
lastcoming into its ovm. A recent article in this journal, Luella
M.Wolf's "Brief History of the Dictamen: Medieval Origins of
Busi-ness Letter Writing,'" underscores both the growing
scholarshipon the origins of modem business writing and the
insights we inBusiness Communication can gain by knowing something
ofhow business writing was approached in earlier times.
In this essay I would like to describe exactly how
businessletter-writing in English began, at least as far as modern
scholar-ship can show us. The earliest business letters in English,
thosedating from the 15th century, are not only interesting
speci-mens of style in themselves but also illustrate for us the
dangersof a writing discipline which becomes so much an exact
sciencethat it loses the art which had once made it effective.
Also, forthe benefit of future researchers, I will describe where
these let-ters may be most readily found.
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20 THE JOURNAL OF BUSINESS COMMUNICATION 17:3
THE LATIN AND FRENCH HERITAGEOF ENGLISH BUSINESS LETTERS
As Luella Wolff points out, modem business letter writinghas its
roots in the arsdjctamm/s or the drc^ameM, a very stylizedform of
letter-writing which was perfected in Italy by the 12thcentury.
After a long period of development, the form spreadthroughout
Europe because of its use by the papal and imperialchancelleries,
which were departments of government that pro-duced all of the
paperwork (written by hand, of course) fromtreaties to office
memos.^ The dictamen was not part of theregular university
curriculum in either France or England,'' butsince it was the basis
of much legal and administrative writingthere was clearly a need
for those skilled in its use. Until aboutthe 13th century,
virtually all literate men and women were insome kind of clerical
orders, with the result that the dictamenwas practiced almost
exclusively in the Church and in thosedepartments of government
which used churchmen as their ad-ministrative staff. Consequently,
the various national govern-ments of Europe and the Papacy all used
a relatively uniformLatin letter-writing style.
Outside of government and ecclesiastical circles, England hadby
1350 reached a high level of economic sophistication.
Record-keeping and private letter-writing were becoming essential
tomany involved in business, and the art of letter-writing began
tofilter down the social ladder. A relatively large class of
profes-sional scribes and notaries grew to meet this need. They had
tobe familiar with every possible letter-writing form, not to
men-tion most of the legal forms necessary to everyday life in
14thcentury England: deeds, petitions, charters, indentures,
etc.Some of these professional "scriveners," as they were
usuallydesignated, worked for the government, some for private
indi-viduals, but many simply for themselves as free-lance,
all-purposescribes. All had at least one basic skill in varying
degrees ofcompetency: the dictamen.
During the 14th century, special courses were offered at
theEnglish universities in the art of letter-writing.'' These
were"special" courses in the sense that they were not part of the
reg-ular courses in Grammar and Rhetoric and were apparentlylooked
down upon by university officials. (The parallels withthe early
days of Business Writing courses in American universi-ties are
painfully obvious.) Students came to these "noncredit"
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EARLY HISTORY IN BUSINESS LETTERS RICHARDSON 21
courses to learn letter-writing skills they would need in
theirdaily business lives, skills which they could never learn in
thetheologically-oriented university classroom.
One teacher of letter-writing was Thomas Sampson, whotaught at
Oxford in the late 14th century. His method of teach-ing (the only
method at the time) was by imitation, providingsample letters to
his students, who then adapted them to theparticulars of their
assignments. After mastering Sampson'sletters, the students would
presumably be able to handle almostany type of business letter. For
this reason, Sampson's pupilsnumbered not only regular university
students but also appren-tice scribes, stewards of noble houses,
and anyone else whoneeded a quick, practical education in business
writing. The titles(given by their modern editor) of the model
letters provided bySampson reveal not only the mundane practicality
of his courseobjectives but incidentally some of the continuing
motifs of col-lege life from the Middle Ages until now: "A letter
to a brotheror sister from a scholar in great need of money"; "A
scholarwrites to a friend asking him to discover whether his
fatherwould approve of his abandoning the Arts course for Law";
"Ascholar seeking employment writes to a knight asking him touse
his influence to obtain a post that is vacant"; "A scholar indebt
to his manciple writes to his father for money."^
Professional scribes did not need to learn their trade at
uni-versities, however. Most probably were trained as apprentices
toexperienced scribes, often under the auspices of the Church
andlater in Scrivener's Guilds. From at least the 14th century
on,the legal section of Londonwhich was developing around
theoffices of the royal Chanceryteemed with all manner of youngmen
eager to learn the basic tenets of the dictamen and theEnglish
system of legal writs. We know all too little about thetraining of
these scribes or clerks, but the uniformity of style inearly
business writing suggests that the professional letter-writerswere
expected to maintain a rigid standard unknown today.
In consequence, by 1400, business correspondence was
handledlargely by a class of professional scribes, most of whom
wereaffiliated in some way with the Church. These men wrote
ex-clusively in Latin or French and followed the rules of the
dicta-men closely. After 1400, however, nationalistic forces
graduallypushed out Latin and French, and as a result business
writingbecame the property of the merchant and agricultural classes
aswell as the Church and central government.
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2 2 THE JO URNAL OF B USINESS COMMUNICA TION - 1 7 : 3
THE EARLIEST ENGLISH BUSINESS LETTERS
We might logically suspect that writing letters in English
goesback farther into history than writing imaginative literature,
theformer skill an apparent prerequisite to the latter art. In
fact,just the opposite happened: whereas literature in English has
atradition unbroken even by the Norman Conquest,
Englishletter-writing really dates only from the 15th century, when
theMiddle English literary tradition was already in decline.
Theearliest preserved private letter in English dates from 1392;
anddespite a few scattered government letters here and
there,English letter-writing did not really get underway on any
scaleuntil the 1420s.
The reasons for this delay are complex and still poorly
under-stood. Certainly Latin and French were relatively "stable"
lan-guages in comparison with English, which was fragmented
byregional dialects and by wholly unstandardized spelling.
Practi-cally speaking, since the scribes were trained and employed
bythe Church and the aristocracy (which regarded French as theonly
true language of a noble, even though by 1400 in Englcmdnobles
probably spoke English most of the time), they wouldnaturally
prefer to write in the official languages of theirpatrons. Finally,
the middle class, for which the use of Latinand French was the
greatest inconvenience, had no tradition ofletter-writing. The
guilds and town corporations dutifully kepttheir records in Latin
and French until they were freed fromthis burden by the example and
encouragement of Shakespeare's"mirror of all Christian kings,"
Henry V (1413-1422).
Henry invaded France in 1415 and began the last phase of
theHundred Years War, which was to end disastrously for the
En-glish, although not until long after Henry's premature death
at35. Probably as a propaganda measure to win the support of
themiddle class, Henry began to send his correspondence homefrom
the war in English, thereby becoming the first Englishmonarch to
use the written vernacular with any regularity. Hesent home two
major series of letters, one a more or less publicseries to the
mayor and aldermen of London tracing his progressin the war,* and
another to his Chancellor giving orders aboutadministrative
details.
With this last series, technically known as Chancery
Warrants,'the writing of business letters in English begins. We do
notknow how many Henry actually sent, but nearly a hundred have
-
EARLY HISTORY IN BUSINESS LETTERS RICHARDSON 23
survived the depredations of the centuries, enough to see
clearlythe pattern of business letters for most of the next
century.They were neither written nor signed by the king, but
werecomposed by his dictamen-trained secretaries. The following is
afair specimen of the style of Henry's correspondence, a
ChanceryWarrant written in 1418 and addressed to his
Chancellor,Thomas Langley, Archbishop of Durham:
By the king. Worshipful father in God, right trusty and
well-beloved: for as much as we have been fully advised to make
ourMaster Masonas master Steven wasone called Colchester, who
ismaster mason both of the church of York and of Westminster,
wewill that you send for the said Colchester and that you give him
hischarge and do make him a patent under our Great Seal such as
hasbeen accustomed before this time in that case. Given under
ourSignet [Seal] in our town of Bemay in Normandy the second day
ofJune,*
Henry's letters are all much like this, unified not only by
therules of the dictamen but by the "strictly-business" tone
setdown by Henry and his clerks. There is not a word wasted inthe
whole series, although the letters tend to be full of
legalisms("the said Colchester") which sometime make them
seemwordier than they really are. All things considered, they are
notonly the first but also the best English business letters in
thedictamen style.
Henry's patriotic gesture was enthusiastically welcomed bythe
English, with the result that even before Henry's death in1422 many
letters and documents which had previously been inLatin or French
were switched wholly or partially to English.Guilds, such as
London's Brewers' Guild, happily began keepingrecords in English,
confident that, at long last, all the memberswho could read at all
could understand the guild records.' Theboon was perhaps greatest
to the merchant class, even thoughfewer of their letters have
survived. Yet even the families of thenobility seemed to welcome
the change, for virtually all the cor-respondence that survives
from the nobility in the middle ages isfrom the 15th century, and
in English. Since England never hada law compelling anyone to write
a private letter in any set lan-guage, the reluctance of the
English to use their own languagebefore the 1420s seems decidedly
perverse to us, but such wasthe strength of tradition and the
influence of the court.
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24 THE JOURNAL OF BUSINESS COMMUNICATION 17:3
THE STYLE OF EARLY BUSINESS LETTERS
Before describing some of the major collections of theseletters,
we should first understand what men and women of the15th century
expected in the way of business-letter style. As arule,
letter-writers attempted to follow the dictamen, at leastthe
simplified dictamen as practiced by the professional scribes,who
still either composed the letters for the sender or had theirstyle
imitated by those literate enough to try their hand
atletter-writing. In general, this was almost identical to the
stylefound in government documents of the age,'" the result
ofhaving scribes who had to be familiar with all legal,
administra-tive, and personal form letters and who understandably
wishedto limit the number of forms they would have to use, with
theimportant result that public form letters became the models
forprivate ones.
The rules of the dictamen were complex and are still
inade-quately described, especially in English." The form
variedaccording to the intent of the letter, although private
businessletters of the time usually obscure the subtle distinctions
madeby the king's secretaries or the royal Chancery clerks.
Basically,a business letter of the 15th century could be made up of
thefollowing formal sections:
1. Address: In royal or aristocratic correspondence, usually(as
in Henry V's letter, above) "right trusty and wellbeloved;"in
private letter, often "worshipful sir/madame," "worshipfuland
wellbeloved cousin/mother/brother," etc.; "right worshipfulsir and
my dear master"; and innumerable variations.
2. Salutation: "We greet you well"; "I recommend me toyou,"
etc.
3. Notification: "And we let you wit [know] that . . . ."4.
Exposition: "Whereas . . ."; "for as much as . . .," etc.5.
Disposition or Injunction: In royal letters, something like
"wherefore we wol [will]"; in private correspondence,
usuallybeginning "wherefore," "therefore," etc.
6. Valediction: "And God have you in his keeping," or a sim-ilar
phrase.
1. Attestation and Date: "Given at . . .," "Written at . .
.,"and the date, sometimes noted by the year of the king's
reign(i.e., "the sixth year of King Harry the Sixth").
To simplify it even more, the body of most letters was
dividedinto two parts. The first section largely gave background,
often
-
EARLY HISTORY IN BUSINESS LETTERS RICHARDSON 25
describing or recalling to the reader's mind the
immediatesituation which caused the writer to send the letter. The
secondpart told the reader what the writer wanted done in response
tothe situation just described. The logical progression of
thoughtis unusually clear, much more so than in many modem
businessletters, particularly since the medieval reader would be
accus-tomed to look for turns of thought at words like
"whereas."The following excerpt from a letter written by William
Paston,about 1430, to the Vicar of the Abbot of Cluny illustrates
thestrength of the style:
My right worthy and worshipful lord, I recommend me to you.And
for as much as I conceive verily that you are vicar general
inEngland of the worthy prelate the Abbot of Cluny and have his
pow-er in a great many articles . . . whereupon I pray you with all
myheart that [you grant to one of your priors the power to accept
cer-tain monks into the order of a monastery near me since they
haveno abbot to accept them at present].'^
For all its virtues of uniformity and clear logic, the
dictamenstyle had its real limitations. Most obvious to us now is
its for-mality and rigidity, neither of which, however, seemed
tobother letter-writers of the 15th century. What did seem tobother
them later in the century was the inability of the dicta-men style
to convey either complexity of thought or eleganceof style, both of
which became more important as England be-came familiar with
classical letters and the more graceful styleof their Italian
contemporaries. Refinement came slowly and thedictamen was not
really superseded until well into the 16th cen-tury (and not even
then in government correspondence). Buteven by the end of the 15th
century, ordinary business letterswere beginning to abandon the
dictamen, leaving only the Ad-dress and the Valediction (which are
with us today in alteredform).
EARLY ENGLISH BUSINESSLETTERS: THE SOURCES
Considering the ephemeral nature of most business
corre-spondence, we have a surprisingly large quantity of
businessletters from the later 15th century. Most of these letters
are in
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26 THE JO URNAL OF B USINESS COMMUNICA TION - 17 :3
large collections of family correspondence which escaped
de-struction only because the family was involved in a lawsuit
orother legal wrangle and its correspondence was impounded bythe
government. We are fortunate that many of these collectionswere
uncovered among the public records and published in the18th and
19th centuries by antiquarians and antiquarian socie-ties who
recognized their historical and linguistic importance.
In reading these letters, we need to bear in mind that
"busi-ness" in the 15th century was very different from modern
busi-ness. Most of the investment in England was still in real
estateand most of the investors were upper-middle-class or of
thelower nobility. The letters characteristically mix business
withpolitical and family news, although in those days of
dynasticmarriages and brutal power politics virtually everything in
one'slife was "business" in one way or another. The distinction
be-tween "private" and "business" life had to wait for a
morestable, prosperous age. We have few letters from people in
themerchant class, and these, while of considerable interest, are
thepoorest written and the most difficult for modem readers
todecipher.
The basic collections of 15th century business letters are
asfollows:
The Cely Letters
The Celys were a well-to-do London family who grew pros-perous
in the wool trade. Their letters are the only collection
ofmerchants' letters which have been preserved and printed,"
andhence should have immense value for students of business
writ-ing. Unfortunately, one of the things they teach us is that
themerchant class worked diligently but ineptly to imitate
theletters of their social betters, slavishly following the
dictamenstyle, which fortunately was suitable for the short
messagesthey usually sent. However, this letter from William Cely
toGeorge Cely illustrates some of the reasons why the dictamenstyle
went out of fashion:
Right worshipful sir, after due consideration I lowly
recommendme unto your mastership. Furthermore, please it your
mastershipto be informed that Margery his daughter is passed to
God. It [she ]was buried this day, on whose soul Jesus have mercy.
Sir, I under-stand it [she] had a great pang; what sickness it was
I cannot say,
-
EARLY HISTORY IN BUSINESS LETTERS RICHARDSON 27
etc. Item, sir, Bottrell [a competitor] is departed out of
Calais and isin England, and this day his wife goeth to [him] with
all her stuff,and they be commanded that they shall not come within
the townof Calais as long as my Lord Chamberlain is Lieutenant of
Calais,etc. No more unto your mastership at this time, but Jesus
keep you.Written at Calais the xxix day of August [1482].
Whether or not this letter seemed as ludicrously insensitive
toGeorge Cely as it does to us may be open to question, but noone
even in the 15th century would have argued that this is anymodel of
stylistic elegance. The undeniable efficiency of thedictamen in
conveying the desires of the writer was at the ex-pense of what is
now and traditionally has been one of the chiefgoals of business
letters, persuasion. This rhetorical deficiency,which is present in
the Cely letters in only a slightly cruderform than that in the
letters of the aristocracy, was eventuallyto undermine and destroy
the dictamen in business writing asthe English became increasingly
sophisticated in their businessdealings.
The Cely collection contains 247 letters, most of which seemto
have been personally written by members of the family andbusiness
associates rather than by professional scribes. When
readconsecutively, the letters reveal a story of fast dealing, of
roughcompetition, of unexpected profits, of even more
unexpectedlosses, and of unreliable family members who can't always
betrusted with delicate jobsthe usual tribulations in the life of
afamily-run business in any age. While not always absorbingreading
(business letters rarely are to those outside the businessin
question), the Cely letters are our most important link withearly
English business writing.
The Paston Letters
The letters of the Paston family of Norfolk are absorbingreading
most of the time, an unexampled look at the personallives of a
large and prosperous land-owning family of the laterMiddle ages.
Justifiably regarded as the finest social document of15th century
England, the Paston collection fills two healthy vol-umes in the
standard Middle English edition.'" The Pastonswereengaged in the
usual business endeavors of the upper middle classand the lesser
nobilityreal estate, agriculture, the law, andmarriageand their
letters present to us an unforgettable picture
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28 THE JOURNAL OF BUSINESS COMMUNICATION - 1 7 : 3
of a family trying to survive the economic and political
instabil-ity of the later 15th century. Most of the letters are
written inthe dictamen style, but, as the Pastons approach and
enter the16th century, we can see the old style passing away and a
morefluid, modern style arising. For this reason, the Paston
lettersare the central documents in the early history of English
busi-ness letters, if only because they are the only unified
collectionwhich begins in the earliest period of English letters in
the 1420sand continues without interruption to the threshold of
theEnglish Renaissance. The Pastons were much better writers
thanthe Celys, and their letters are generally more detailed,
personal,and persuasive (in the rhetorical sense) than other
letters oftheir contemporaries. Gnly about one-third of the large
collec-tion can really be called business correspondence, however,
theremainder being mainly family newsletters. The second volumeof
the Gxford edition is made up of letters to the family and isitself
a superb cross-section of early letters.
The Plumpton Letters
Similar in many other respects to the Paston letters, the
let-ters of the Plumpton family lack the historical and
linguisticinterest of the more famous series and have yet to
receive amodern edition.'^ They do illustrate the changes in
letter-writingstyle between the earliest letter (1461) and the
latest (1551)and include letters from the celebrated Earl of
Warwick ("theKingmaker") and Richard, Duke of Gloucester (the
futureRichard III). Only a few of the letters can be construed
asbusiness letters, however.
The Stonor Letters and Papers
These are more directly concerned with business affairs,
onceagain the business of great landowners." The items in
Englishbegin immediately after 1420 and end about 1483, when
thepapers were seized by the government after Sir William
Stonorjoined the Duke of Buckingham's rebellion against Richard
III.
The Shillingford Correspondence
The correspondence is a refreshing exception to the iron ruleof
the dictamen in the 15th century. Most of the letters and
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EARLY HISTORY IN BUSINESS LETTERS RICHARDSON 29
memoranda in the only available edition'' are no better orworse
than one might expect from local and government of-ficials of that
time, but Shillingford's own letters are unusuallygood reading. As
mayor of Exeter, he became involved in alawsuit between the city
and Edmund Lacy, Bishop of Exeter,who was what would now be called
a "slum lord." Shillingfordhad to go to London to try to win over
the Chancellor to hisside and to present his case as best he could.
A man of some ed-ucation and no small amount of humor (or temper),
Shillingfordfills his letters to his town councilmen with shrewd
reasoningand attention to detail, often adding realistic bits of
dialoguefor effect. He knew his audience was eager for newsand
newsthey got, with a vividness which no other letter-writer of
thecentury was able to bring to paper. We have all too few of
hisletters. The ones we have were found at Exeter in the late
19thcentury in an old cupboard in the Council Chamber and underthe
tiles of the Guildhall roof.
Other Sources
Outside of the Cely letters, the best source of middle
classbusiness writing in 15th century England is found in
Chambersand Daunt's Book of London English, 1384-1425,^^ an
in-valuable assortment of letters, memoranda, guild records,
andother documents. Most of the letters are official
correspondencebetween the city fathers and the king. They are not
really busi-ness letters except in the widest sense, but anyone
investigatingthe early history of English business writing can find
no bettersource readily available.
Secondary sources for early English business writing are, forall
practical purposes, nonexistent. The best general study ofletters
during this period is the chapter, "English Letters and
theIntellectual Ferment," in C. L. Kingsford's Prejudice and
Pro-mise in XVth Century England.^^ A readable discussion isfound
in the introduction to Laetitia Lyell's A Mediaeval PostBag.^
Otherwise, we must look to the future for full treatmentof this
important chapter in the history of business writing.
CONCLUSION
The earliest phase of English business writing illustrates,above
all, the dangers inherent in slavishly accepting the received
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3 0 THE JO URN A L OF B USINESS COMM UNICA TION 17:3
opinion on how to write a business letter. It may be true, in
thewords of a noted scholar of medieval studies, that "if the
lan-guage seems to the modem ear tiresomely verbose and
artificial,it is only fair to remember that every age has its own
methodsof getting business through."^' Yet it is also fair to
rememberthat the needs of early business writers quickly outgrew
themethods they were expected to use in their writing. Long be-fore
the dawn of the English Renaissance, business writing hadaltered to
meet the practical needs of the business community.And then, as
now, the technical, social, and human challengesof a more complex
new age casually pushed aside the carefullycodified assumptions of
its predecessor.
ttt
NOTES AND REFERENCES
1. The Journal of Business Communication, Vol. 16, No. 2,
Winter1979, pp. 3-11.
2. The English Chancery developed into a court of equity by
about1500, but in preceding centuries was largely a secretariat and
as such had agreat influence on English language and letters. See
John H. Fisher, "Chan-cery and the Emergence of Standard Written
English in the Fifteenth Cen-tury," Speculum, Vol. 52, 1977,
870-99.
3. H. G. Richardson, "Letters of the Oxford Dictatores," in
FormulariesWhich Bear on the History of Oxford, c. 1204-1420, ed.
H. E. Salter,W. A. Pantin, and H. G. Richardson, Oxford Historical
Society, n.s.. No. 5,Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1942, p. 332.
4. The standard works on medieval business writing education
inEngland are Richardson's "Letters of the Oxford Dictatores" and
his"Business Training in Medieved Oxford," American Historical
Review, Vol.46, 1940-41, pp. 259-80, on which my comments are
based.
5. Richardson, "Letters," pp. 398-403.6. Printed in R. W.
Chambers and Marjorie Daunt, A Book of London
English, 1384-1425, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931, pp. 61-89.7.
Chancery Warrants were authorizations from the king for the
Chan-
cery to take some action, ranging from issuing a safe-conduct
pass to amessenger to appointing a bishop. Henry V's Chancery
Warrants in En-glish are mostly unpublished and are found in the
Public Record Office,London, classification numbers C81/1364 and
1365.
8. An unpublished warrant, C81/1364/58, modernized.9. The
Brewer's Guild credited Henry V personally for encouraging the
use of the vernacular. Their proclamation is printed in the
original Latin inChambers and Daunt, p. 16, and in English
translation in Albert C. Baugh,A History of the English Language,
2nd ed.. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1957, pp. 183-184.
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EARLY HISTORY IN BUSINESS LETTERS RICHARDSON 31
10. The dictamen letter was the basis for an enormous amount of
legaland diplomatic forms. In England, for example, the king's
authorizations,grants, etc. were usually in the form of Letters
Patent, while his admini-strative orders were called Letters Close.
The standard works in English onthis subject are Hubert Hall,
Formula Book of English Official HistoricalDocuments, 2 vols.,
1908-1909; rpt. New York: Burt Franklin, 1969, andhis Studies in
English Official Historical Documents, 1908; rpt. New York:Burt
Franklin, 1969. Unfortunately, neither book makes any concessionsto
the nonspecialist.
11. The following is adopted from Hall's Studies.12. Paston
Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, ed., Norman
David, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971, Vol. 1, pp. 6-7.13. The
Cely Letters, 1472-1488, ed. Alison Hanham, Early English
Text Society, No. 273, London: Oxford University Press, 1975.
All ofthese and the succeeding letters are printed in the original
Middle English.
14. By Norman Davis (see no. 12, above). A more accessible
versionfor the modern reader is the Everyman Library edition, 2
Vols., Londonand Toronto: J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., 1924.
15. The only edition is Plumpton Correspondence, ed., Thomas
Staple-ton, Camden Society, First Series, No. 4, London, 1839.
16. The Stonor Letters and Papers, 1290-1483, 2 vols., ed., C.
L. Kings-ford, Camden Society, Third Series, Nos. 29-30, London:
Royal HistoricalSociety, 1919.
17. Letters and Papers of John Shillingford, Mayor of Exeter,
1447-50,ed., Stuart A. Moore, Camden Society, Second Series, No. 2,
London,1871.
18. See no. 6 above.19. Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, Prejudice
and Promise in XVth Cen-
tury England, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925, pp. 22-47.20.
Laetitia Lyell, A Mediaeval Post Bag, London: Jonathan Cape,
1934, which also contains modernized versions of many of the
lettersdiscussed here.
21. W. A. Pantin, "Some Oxford Letters from Bern MS. 69," in
Formu-laries Which Bear on the History of Oxford, p. 261.
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