pilfered_words

Actually, this is the modern version. It’s also valid for the Regency era, but medieval titles were much more …flexible.

 

Shakespeare, Richard II (1595):

 

A heavy sentence, my most sovereign liege,

And all unlook’d for from your highness’ mouth:

 

King Lear (1605):

 

…I profess

Myself an enemy to all other joys,

Which the most precious square of sense possesses;

And find I am alone felicitate

In your dear highness’ love.

 

Letter from Anne Boleyn to Henry VIII from the Tower (1536):

 

Sir, Your Grace’s displeasure, and my Imprisonment are Things so strange unto me, as what to Write, or what to Excuse, I am altogether ignorant…

 

Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur (1485):

 

My most noble lord and king, said Sir Launcelot … And as for my lady, Queen Guenever, except your person of your highness, and my lord Sir Gawaine, there is no knight under heaven that dare make it good upon me, that ever I was a traitor unto your person.