That there was a standard of written English in the fifteenth century is obvious and a commonplace. The flood of government documents that starts in the years following 1430 is written in a language that forms the basis of modern written English. This type of language was consistently used by the government officials of the Chancery, and is therefore known as Chancery Standard. ‘It was backed up by the full weight of the administrative machine, and was certain to oust eventually (though by no means immediately) the other incipient standards’ (Samuels 1963: 89).

Before 1430 most administrative documents were drawn up in Latin or French with a trickle of English documents; after 1430 the proportions are reversed. The Chancery Standard that then emerged was a written type of language but, like all written types, it was based on a spoken variety. Such a spoken variety, which was certainly not the regional London dialect, see below, must have been in use for a considerable time and must in the early fifteenth century have enjoyed high prestige. It may not be amiss to assume that its inception is to be sought in the early fourteenth century. The question is how this type of English arose in London.

As early as 1888 Lorentz Morsbach in his book Über den ursprung der neuenglischen Schriftsprache pointed to the differences between Standard English and the regional London dialect. The language in the late Middle English texts that he examined was East Midland. London, however, is situated in the East Saxon territory, was in fact the capital of the kingdom of Essex, and its language should, therefore, have been East Saxon. The change of dialect was, in Morsbach’s view, due to the vicinity to the Anglian area. This is an erroneous view since the counties immediately north of London (Middlesex, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire) were linguistically Saxon. Karl Luick (1914: 49ff) also emphasised that the London language had an Anglian character in consequence of influence from the Anglian area. Karl Brunner (1950) was the first to suggest that the change of dialect was due to immigration from the East Midlands, especially Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. Brunner, however, does not work out his theory in any detail.