ers as to the exact time when it ceased to be the language of the
people, unless we bear in mind that what was true with regard to the
higher classes was not so with regard to the lower, and likewise that in
some parts of Cornwall the vitality of the language might continue, while
in others its heart had ceased to beat. As late as the time of Henry
VIII., the famous physician Andrew Borde tells us that English was not
understood by many men and women in Cornwall. "In Cornwal is two
speeches," he writes; "the one is naughty Englyshe, and the other the
Cornyshe speche. And there be many men and women the which cannot speake
one worde of Englyshe, but all Cornyshe." During the same King's reign,
when an attempt was made to introduce a new church service composed in
English, a protest was signed by the Devonshire and Cornish men utterly
refusing this new English:--

"We will not receive the new Service, because it is but like a
Christmas game; but we will have our old Service of Matins, Mass,
Evensong, and Procession, in Latin as it was before. And so we the
Cornish men (whereof certain of us understand no English) utterly
refuse this new English."(40)

Yet in the reign of Elizabeth, when the liturgy was appointed by authority
to take the place of the mass, the Cornish, it is said,(41) desired that
it should be in the English language. About the same time we are told that
Dr. John Moreman(42) taught his parishioners the Lord's Prayer, the Creed,
and the Ten Commandments, in the English tongue. From the time of the
Reformation onward, Cornish seems constantly to have lost ground against
English, particularly in places near Devonshire. Thus Norden, whose
description of Cornwall was probably written about 1584, though not
published till 1728, gives a very full and interesting account of the
struggle between the two languages:--

"Of late," he says (p. 26), "the Cornishe men have muche conformed
themselves to the use of the Englishe tounge, and their Englishe
is equall to the beste, espetially in the easterne partes; even
from Truro eastwarde it is in manner wholly Englishe. In the weste
parte of the countrye, as in the hundreds of Penwith and Kerrier,
the Cornishe tounge is moste in use amongste the inhabitantes, and
yet (whiche is to be marveyled), though the husband and wife,
parentes and children, master and servantes, doe mutually
communicate in their native l