This study focuses on the three ‘official’ languages of later medieval law and government – Latin, French and English – and their particular usage in relation to petitions to the crown. It aims to reconsider the influences that drove the initial choice of French as the language of petitioning in the late thirteenth century and led to the adoption of English as a valid alternative for these documents by the mid-fifteenth century. It also addresses the oral/aural qualities of the petition and attempts to rationalize the relationship between written and spoken forms through analysis of the language employed by the authors of these texts.

My sources are derived from two important collections: the parliament rolls and the Ancient Petitions, both held in the National Archives and both now available in searchable electronic form. Between them, the parliament rolls and the Ancient Petitions provide us with access to a large body (though not, it must be emphasized, all) of the extant petitions made to the English crown during the later Middle Ages. These petitions come in two main forms: ‘private petitions’, which express the concerns of individuals or specific interest groups; and ‘common petitions’, which are either articulations of general concerns of the kingdom as a whole put together by the commons in parliament or private petitions ‘adopted’ by the commons because they raise issues perceived to be of general interest to the realm.