On "Standardizing" English: Chancery English

[/div][li style="text-align:justify;"]Chancery standard was a written form of English used by government bureaucracy and for other official purposes from the late 14th century.[/li][li style="text-align:justify;"]The government required a clear and unambiguous form for use in its official documents. Chancery Standard was developed to meet this need.[/li][li style="text-align:justify;"]The standard was developed during the reign of King Henry V (1413-1422). It had become broadly standardized by about the 1430s.[/li][li style="text-align:justify;"]It was largely based on the London and East Midland dialects, as those areas were the political and demographic "centres of gravity" of England.[/li][li style="text-align:justify;"]By the mid-15th century, Chancery Standard was used for most official purposes except the Church (which used Latin) and some legal matters (which used French and some Latin).[/li][li style="text-align:justify;"]It was disseminated around England by bureaucrats on official business, and slowly gained prestige.[/li][li style="text-align:justify;"]Chancery Standard provided a widely-intelligible form of English for the first printers, who appeared later in the 15th century.[/li][li style="text-align:justify;"]There was still a remarkable amount of variation in Chancery texts – far too much to enable this source to be viewed as the chief standardizing force.[/li][/ul]