Chancery Standard

E105677

Chancery Standard was a late Middle English written form used in royal and legal administration that helped shape the spelling and norms of Early Modern English.

All labels observed (2)

Label Occurrences
Chancery Standard canonical 1
English Chancery 1

How this entity was disambiguated

Statements (48)

Predicate Object
instanceOf administrative language
variety of Middle English
written standard
appliedIn legal documents
official correspondence
royal documents
approximateEndDate early 16th century
approximateStartDate early 15th century
associatedWith centralization of English royal government
standardization of English orthography
characteristic preference for certain London-based lexical forms
reduced dialectal variation in official documents
relatively fixed spelling conventions
use of they, them, their as third-person plural pronouns
use of third-person singular -th ending
developedFrom East Midlands dialect features
London dialect of Middle English
distinctFrom regional Middle English dialects
domain government administration
law
followedBy printed Early Modern English norms
function administrative record-keeping
legal record-keeping
standardization of official English
historicalContext late medieval England
influenced Early Modern English spelling
Early Modern English written norms
standardization of English
influencedBy scribal practices of Westminster and London
language English
medium manuscript
precededBy less standardized Middle English documentary practices
predecessorOf Early Modern English
surface form: Early Modern English written standard
region England
status de facto written standard in English royal administration
timePeriod 15th century
usedBy English legal administration
English royal administration
usedByInstitution Chancery Standard self-linksurface differs
surface form: English Chancery

Royal Chancery of England
usedByProfession clerks of the Chancery
royal scribes
usedFor legal writs
official letters
parliamentary records
royal proclamations
usedInPeriod late Middle English
writingSystem Latin alphabet

How these facts were elicited

Referenced by (2)

Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.

Chancery Standard usedByInstitution Chancery Standard self-linksurface differs
this entity surface form: English Chancery