The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language

by Melvyn Bragg

The Inkhorn Controversy is interesting because it set up a discussion which still goes on as to the most effective, the most poetic, the most honest, even the “truest” way of writing English. The leading opponent of the increasing invasion of Latin and Greek words was Sir John Cheke (1514–57), Provost of King’s College, Cambridge. He argued strongly that English should not be polluted by other tongues. Ironically, Cheke was a classicist and the first Regius Professor of Greek in Cambridge. Nevertheless, Cheke believed that English should be reappraised as a Germanic language. It had to go back, uncover and build on its Anglo-Saxon roots. During his time the history of English became a fashionable subject and manuscripts copied from Anglo-Saxon texts were read aloud among the anti-Inkhorn tendency. To prove a point, Sir John even went so far as to translate the Gospel of St. Matthew using English lexical resources for new words. He invented “gainrising” for “resurrection,” “ground-wrought” for “founded” and “hundreder” for “centurion” and used “crossed” for “crucified.”