The vestry records of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries show that Cockney was not only well established but already exhibited certain permanent features. Thus “the abbot of Westmynster and the monks reprevyed … Mr. Phipp who was chosen constable in which complaint he made appear his imbecility … yt was erecktyde by most voysses … without the least predyges of the paryshe … he wold nott church a woman owt-sept she wold com at vi in the mornyng.” Then there were the double negatives: “he shuld neuer trobell the parish no more … not otherwysse to be ussyd at noo tyme”; in a seventeenth-century stage play this is parodied as “Were you never none of Mister Moncaster’s scholars?” Here again we can hear them talking: “Att this vestry it was ffurder menshoned whether the parishe would be pleased to Accept of Mr. Gardener for to bee a Lecterrer … greytt necklygence of our pyssheners.” In diaries of the sixteenth century, particularly that of Henry Machyn, there are phonetic spellings that catch the very accent and intonation of these early Cockneys: “anodur” for “another” and “alff” for “half.” Vestmynster, Smytfeld, Hondyche and Powlles Cross are mentioned together with Honsley heth and Bednoll Grene. One of Machyn’s entries concerns a sudden bolt of lightning, when “on of servand was so freyd that ys here stod up, and yt wyll never come down synes.” A diligent investigator has also found many devices, used by Cockneys of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which are still familiar; among them are “Stren” instead of “Strand,” “sattisfectory” instead of “satisfactory,” “texes” instead of “taxes,” “towled” instead of “told,” “owlde” instead of “old,” “chynes” not “chains,” “rile” instead of “rail,” “suthe” instead of “south,” “hoathe” instead of “oath,” “orfunt” instead of “orphan,” “cloues” instead of “clothes,” “sawgars” instead of “soldiers,” “notamy” instead of “anatomy,” “vill” instead of “will,” “usse” instead of “house,” “’im” instead of “him.” Certain key words and phrases have also survived the centuries, among them “sav’d ’is bacon,” bouze (drink), poppet (girl), elbow-grease (energy), paw (hand), swop (exchange) and tick (credit). The central point is clear: the Cockney speech of the twenty-first century is in many respects identical to that of the sixteenth century. As an oral tradition, it has never died.
Cockney of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was also reproduced on stage, as well as in written reports, but at this early date it was parodied rather than mocked. Mistress Quickly, the garrulous hostess of the Boar’s Head in East Cheap in the second part of Shakespeare’s
Fielding was another wonderful observer of London life in the first decades of the eighteenth century; he heard the voices, too, and reproduced them with great precision. “It would be the hiest preasumption to imagine you eggnorant of my loave. No, madam, I sollemly purtest,” writes Jonathan Wild to an assumed admirer, “… I have not slept a wink since I had the hapness of seing you last; therefore hop you will, out of Kumpassion …”
It is the same accent identified by Smollett at a slightly later date. “Coind sur, Heaving the playsure of meating with you at the ospital of anvilheads [invalids], I take this lubbertea of latin you know …” There is more than humour here; there is also a sense of farce and singularity which in no way condemns the Cockney speakers for their mannerisms. In the same spirit the dramatic vitality and sympathy, to be found in Shakespeare, emerge in these other urban writers. Smollett practised for a while as a surgeon in Downing Street, and Fielding as a judge in Bow Street; they knew all the voices. Their connection with London speech also throws a suggestive light upon the observations of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, writing in his journal of 1826, that for “a man of letters who endeavours to cultivate, however modestly, the medium of Shakespeare and Milton … London must ever have a great illustrative and suggestive value, and indeed a kind of sanctity.”
