Textbooks inform readers that the precursor of Standard English was supposedly an East or Central Midlands variety which became adopted in London; that monolingual fifteenth century English manuscripts fall into internally-cohesive Types; and that the fourth Type, dating after 1435 and labelled Chancery Standard, provided the mechanism by which this supposedly Midlands variety spread out from London. This set of explanations is challenged by taking a multilingual perspective, examining Anglo-Norman French, Medieval Latin and mixed-language contexts as well as monolingual English ones. By analysing local and legal documents, mercantile accounts, personal letters and journals, medical and religious prose, multiply-copied works, and the output of individual scribes, standardisation is shown to have been preceded by supralocalisation rather than imposed top-down as a single entity by governmental authority. Linguistic features examined include syntax, morphology, vocabulary, spelling, letter-graphs, abbreviations and suspensions, social context and discourse norms, pragmatics, registers, text-types, communities of practice social networks, and the multilingual backdrop, which was influenced by shifting socioeconomic trends.

• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Part 1: The orthodox version
• Introduction
• 1. A critical look at previous accounts of the standardisation of English
• 2. The ‘vernacularisation’ and ‘standardisation’ of local administrative writing in late and post-medieval England
• 3. The linguistic character of manuscripts attributed to the Beryn Scribe: A comparative study
• 4. Spelling practices in late Middle English medical prose: A quantitative analysis
• 5. Standardisation, exemplars, and the Auchinleck manuscript
• 6. Bristol <th>, <þ> and <y>: The North-South divide revisited, 1400–1700
• 7. <th> versus <þ>: Latin-based influences and social awareness in the Paston letters
• 8. Early mass communication as a standardizing influence? The case of the Book of Common Prayer
• Part 2: The revised version
• 9. Abbreviations and standardisation in the Polychronicon: Latin to English and manuscript to print
• 10. William Worcester’s Itineraria: mixed-language notes of a medieval traveller
• 11. The relationship of borrowing from French and Latin in the Middle English period with the development of the lexicon of Standard English: Some observations and a lot of questions
• 12. The role of multilingualism in the emergence of a technical register in the Middle English period
• 13. More sugar and spice: Revisiting medieval Italian influence on the mercantile lexis of England
• 14. -mannus makyth man(n)? Latin as an indirect source for English lexical history
• 15. Communities of practice, proto-standardisation and spelling focusing in the Stonor letters
• 16. A comparison of some French and English nominal suffixes in early English correspondence (1420–1681)
• 17. Textual standardisation of legal Scots vis a vis Latin
• 18. Rising living standards, the demise of Anglo-Norman and mixed-language writing, and standard English
• Index