Conceit and Capacities of the Vulgar Sort: The Social History of English as a Language of Politics

Abstract

The growth of England from Norman-Angevin colony to imperial power began with the social development of a national community that conducted its arguments in English. In this sense vernacularization was the constituting process of English history. This article connects the history of language to constitutional history, and affirms recent calls for an approach that transcends conventional boundaries between late medieval and early modern periods, and between intellectual, cultural, social, demographic, economic, political and constitutional histories. Vernacularization is seen as a movement from below. It is linked in various ways to traditions and customs of resistance and rebellion that are seen as having shaped the history of England from the thirteenth century to 1649.