Conclusion: towards a history of the multilingual city
Early modern London was multilingual. In fact, it was much more multilingual than this article has been able to show. Not far from where Philipine Seneschal and her mother-in-law insulted each other in French and English, two men named Manteo and Wanchese were teaching their Algonquian language to Thomas Hariot.
London’s migrants spoke Welsh and Scots and Portuguese as well as French and Dutch.
One commentator described the city as England’s ‘third universitie’, where you could learn Chaldean, Syriac and Arabic, as well as Polish, Persian and Russian, among ‘divers other Languages fit for Embassadors and Orators, and Agents for Marchants, and for Travaylors, and necessarie for all Commerce or Negotiation whatsoever’.
The stranger churches’ records testify to the presence in London of Turks and Swedes, Spaniards, Germans and Greeks. The voices of the city’s small but growing African population no doubt brought new languages to London’s streets, even if we lack the detailed and linguistically rich archives of their experiences which we are lucky to have for other groups of strangers.