freeholders of the county, whereby they and their heirs, without challenge or interference from him and his heirs, were permitted to fell, sell, and give, at their pleasure, their forest woods, without being subject to the forest regulations, and to hunt and take hares, foxes, rabbits, and all kinds of wild beasts, excepting stags, hinds, roebucks, and wild hogs, in all parts within his forests beyond the desmesne hays of the county.[1] On ascending the throne, however, he soon aroused the indignation of all sections of his subjects by his meanness, pride, and utter inability to govern the kingdom. His indolent habits excited the disgust of a nobility, whose regular custom was to breakfast at five and dine at nine in the morning, as proclaimed by the following popular Norman proverb:—
Lever à cinque, dîner à neuf,
Souper à cinque, coucher à neuf,
Fait vivre d'ans nonante et neuf.[2]
Eventually his evil actions and foolish threats so incensed the nation, that the barons, headed by William, earl of Pembroke, compelled him, in 1215, to sign the Magna Charta, a code of laws embodying two important principles—the general rights of the freemen, and the limitation of the powers of both king and pope.
About that time it would have been almost, if not quite, impossible to have decided or described what was the national language of the country. The services at the churches were read in Latin, the aristocracy indulged only in Norman-French, whilst the great mass of the people spoke a language, usually denominated Saxon or English, but which had been so mutilated and altered by additions from various sources that the ancient "Settlers on the shores of the German Ocean" would scarcely have recognized it as their native tongue. Each division of the kingdom had its peculiar dialect, very much as now, and from the remarks of a southern writer, named Trevisa, it must be inferred that the patois of our own district, which he would include in the old province of Northumbria,[3] was far from either elegant or
