Perhaps because the English text precedes the Dutch in the manuscript, it has been assumed that the English came first and was ‘translated into Dutch’,
1 Ian W. Archer, The History of the Haberdashers’ Company (Chichester: Phillimore and Co., 1991), p. 61. but the rather loose relationship between the wording of the Dutch and the English versions makes it misleading to speak of ‘translation’, at least in the modern sense. Certainly, there is evidence of cross-language influence but, as we shall see in the next chapter, that influence runs in both directions, and a comparison of the Dutch text with its English counterpart shows that they are often strikingly independent of each other. Consider, for example, the English and Dutch text (followed in brackets by our translation) of article 19:
Item, it is established and ordeyned that no broder of the seid fraternite shall take no maner a man or put to his occupacion of the seid craft of hatmakynge without he by lerneth [unless he is instructed] in the same fraternite, nor noon other that comyth frome any mastur of any odur fraternite or felyshyp, vpon suche payne as by the masturs and more parte of the seid brederne of the seid fraternite shal be resonably aftur ther discrecioun limited and assigned.
Item, dat is versament ende geordinert dat geen broder van derseluer broderscop sal annemen genen knecht ofte to werke setten de myt enigen anderen meister geleert heeft de in vnser broderye niet en is, he en betale de bote to den meysters ende ouersienders van derseluer broderscop als he kan corderen mytten iiij meysteren de dair to geset sijn.
(Item, this is enjoined and ordained that no brother of the same brotherhood shall employ or put to work any servant who has been taught by another master who is not our brotherhood, unless he pay such a fine to the masters and overseers as he can agree with the four masters appointed thereto.)
The English and the Dutch agree on the general sense, but neither version appears to have served as the linguistic model for the other. In fact, they differ on matters of detail. In the English, the penalty is to be decided by the masters and the majority of the membership; in the Dutch the amount is to be decided by mutual agreement between the masters, the supervisors, and the offender.
A revealing detail that shows the relative independence of the Dutch from the English is that the first-person plural pronoun is present only in the Dutch and not in the English. This pattern is remarkably consistent:
1Article 3 within this realme of England myt vns int konincrik van Engeland
2 the seid craft vnse ambocht
3Article 5 of the seid craft van vnsen ambocht
4Article 6 the seid craft vnsen ambocht
5Article 19 in the same fraternite in vnser broderye
The expression of collective identity (our craft, our fraternity) apparently felt right in Dutch, but not in English.
There is thus no exact alignment between the wording of the Dutch and the English articles, and the texts in these two languages seem generally to have been drawn up without much cross-checking. They must have been formulated either by two different guild members or by a perfectly bilingual language user who had no need to consult the text in one language to generate its equivalent in the other. Consider, as another example, article 20:
Item, it is established and ordeyned that if any seruant departe fromme his mastur and seruice with licence or without licence asked and obteyned of his mastur, that thenne no broder of the same fraternite shall take or accepte the seid seruant so departyng, without licence of his masturs whome he before serued, vpon payne of iiij li. wex, to be applied and paid to the seyd fraternite without any contradiction or remission.
Item, dat is versament ende geordinert of enich knecht van synen meyster genge myt orlof ofte sunder orlof ende gaet tot enen anderen meister om myt him to werken soe en sal geen broder van derseluer broderscop den knecht to werke setten, hie en vrage ersten sinen meister dair he van gegaen is oft dat sijn wille sy, vp de bote van iiij lb. wasses sunder enige voirgiffenisse te betalen.
(Item, it is enjoined and ordained that if any servant leaves his master with permission or without permission and goes to another master in order to work with him, then no brother of the same brotherhood shall put this servant to work, unless he first asks his master whom he left if it were his will, under penalty of four pounds of wax, to be paid without any remission.)
There is, here and elsewhere in the English text, as indeed in English prose of this period more generally,
2 See David Burnley, ‘Curial Prose in England’, Speculum 61 (1986), 593–614, and Elizabeth Kubaschewski, ‘Binomials in Caxton’s Ovid (Book I)’, in Binomials in the History of English, ed. Joanna Kopaczyk and Hans Sauer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 141‒58. a fondness for binomial constructions (‘asked and obteyned’, ‘take or accepte’, ‘to be applied and paid’, ‘contradiction or remission’) that is much less pronounced in the Dutch text, which is consequently shorter. But if the Dutch text had been intended as an abbreviation of the English, we could not explain why it is on occasion much wordier, as in ‘hie en vrage ersten sinen meister dair he van gegaen ist of dat sijn wille sy’, which bears little lexical and grammatical resemblance to the succinct English formula, ‘without license of his masturs whom he before serued’. Nor could we explain why the Dutch occasionally indulges in binomials, as in ‘Ende we dit voirsmaet ende ofte dair tegen doet’ (And whoever violates this or acts against it), when the English has just one phrase (‘And whoseumeuyr attempte the contrary’, article 5) or indeed nothing at all. For example, in article 16,
de dat versumet ende niet en doet (‘who disregards this and does not do it’), has no English equivalent, even as the English has a formula containing a binomial (‘to be applied vnder maner and forme before rehersed’) that is not in the Dutch.
The hypothesis that explains this variation is that we are dealing with bilingual text formulated either by two speakers or by one bilingual speaker who aimed to say more or less the same thing in both languages. That ‘more or less’ applies both to the number of words and to the content. For another example, compare the last sentence of article 9, where the English and the Dutch again part ways:
And the partie hurt or aggreuyd to be recompensed after the discrecion of the wardens.
Ande ofte de partien malcanderen beclagen, sullen de meysters nae hour verstandenisse verenigen ende to to vrede stellen. (And if the parties accuse each other, the masters shall, according to their understanding, unite and conciliate [them]).
Unlike the slavish Dutch-English translations that we encountered in The Book of Privileges (see above, p. 78), the prose here is perfectly idiomatic in both languages, and neither sentence ‘translates’ the other. What is striking, in fact, is the difference between the English sentence and the Dutch one, and precise minds will have noticed the procedural discrepancy. In the English text, it is the wardens who must settle the dispute and specify the compensation due to the aggrieved party. In the Dutch, the masters are responsible for reconciling the parties: payment of compensation may have been understood, but it is not explicitly mentioned.
We conclude that the English and the Dutch versions give expression to the same basic idea, but that most of the text was formulated without any ‘translation’ being involved.