An unusual source of evidence for dialect: the sword inscriptions of William Peachey

The sword inscriptions of William Peachey, a seventeenth-century Sussex blacksmith, are an unusual and neglected source of evidence about the dialect of eastern Hampshire and western Sussex of this period. What they tell us is remarkably consistent with the assumption of long-term stability in local speech-patterns before the immediate present. The cavalry unit for which they were made was raised at Hambledon, Hamsphire, and the evidence of the inscriptions tallies well with the dialect features recorded from the same place around 1960.