Crowner’s Quest

Author’s Note

Any attempt to give modern English dialogue an ‘olde worlde’ flavour in historical novels is as inaccurate as it is futile. In the time and place of this story, late twelfth-century Devon, most people would have spoken early Middle English, which would be unintelligible to us today. Many others spoke western Welsh, later called Cornish, and the ruling classes would have spoken Norman-French. The language of the Church and virtually all official writing was Latin.

Part of this story, most of whose major characters actually existed, is set against the rebellious behaviour of Prince John towards his elder brother, Richard the Lionheart. This was a very real threat in this last decade of the twelfth century, John’s first attempt being made to usurp the Crown when Richard was imprisoned in Germany on his way home from the Third Crusade. Then John did homage to Philip of France and a French invasion fleet for a Flemish army was made ready. The mother of the brothers, the redoubtable Eleanor of Aquitaine, mustered a defence force of ‘rustics as well as knights on the coasts over against Flanders’. This was perhaps a medieval precursor of 1940, Home Guard included – had it failed, we might now have all been speaking French!