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The History of English Podcast · Kevin Stroud

Episode 188: Old England and New England

·1 hr 24 min·1 clip
Letters J and V evolved from written variations of I and U, representing sound shifts through medieval scribal practice.
The episode opens in the early 1630s. It uses that moment to follow the first mass migration from England to North America, when about 20,000 people boarded ships and headed for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. That movement becomes the main bridge between Old England and New England. The show is interested in what changes when people, speech, and texts move together across an ocean. Cotton enters the story as a major collector of manuscripts. His library held much of his life's work, and the episode notes that its loss seems to have affected his health. Charles I had the library sealed shut after Cotton was locked out of the building. The episode treats that act as part of the political climate around the king's attempts to rule without Parliament. While Cotton was still cut off, a friend from Dover sent him a new manuscript. The note promised the charter of King John, identified in the episode as Magna Carta, and framed the gift as something to be sent by the safest messenger. That copy mattered because Magna Carta had long been a symbol of limits on royal power. The episode explains why opponents of Charles I cared so much about that document. It was not just an old text on a shelf. It was a legal reminder that the English king was not meant to be an absolute monarch. From there the episode returns to migration. Some people were not staying to argue with the crown. They were leaving England altogether and making for the new colony in North America. The historical and linguistic threads stay tied together rather than being treated separately. The episode ends by using old speech as evidence that accents and dialects do change over time, sometimes enough that earlier forms of English would sound very different from modern ears. It also points forward to a future episode on the modern dialects of New England.

As heard by us

A colonial migration story that ties language, politics, and settlement together.

Episode 188 draws a clear line from the first mass migration from England to North America to the politics, manuscript culture, and shifting speech of the early 1630s.

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Why you'd press play

You want the story of English crossing the Atlantic in the early 1630s and taking shape in New England.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →
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