ABSTRACT
The English upper classes have always taken their superiority to the rest of their fellow countrymen for granted. There was more justification for this attitude in the Middle Ages than in more recent periods. Today, relatively subtle idiosyncrasies distinguish upperclass speech, but in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the aristocracy spoke a different language from the common people: a dialect form of French. The great nobles spent much of the time travelling, for their estates were widely scattered, whereas relatively few of the rest of the populace regularly went far from their homes. Legislation even attempted to ensure that the lower orders did not ape their betters by imitating their clothing.
