Chancery established a standardized written dialect about 1430, and spread it throughout England by 1460. In the absence of any other standard model for writing in the vernacular, Chancery Standard was accepted as an everyday language among the literati. The Cely Letters begin in 1472 and end in 1488. The Celys were wool merchants in London, whose interests were mostly in city affairs and in their business. Needless to say, they could write and read fairly well, though they are said to have been "less sophisticated than the Pastons". How Chancery Standard might influence private business correspondence can be seen easily if we arrange the documents in chronological order and examine the process by which certain regional forms are being driven out by the standard forms. So far as the Cely Letters are concerned, the result of a close examination of the spellings suggests that the situation is not so simple as may be expected. Firstly, inconsistency is seen in the spelling system of the Cely family. It is characterized by mixtures of various regional spellings, among which the ones current in London English must have been included in part. Secondly, the Celys left a small number of letters in a short period. Much more would be desirable to examine the influence of Chancery Standard on the Cely papers, because standardization takes a long time to complete. Thirdly, the influence is hard to ascertain at first sight, even if the spelling might resemble that of Chancery, because there are some occasions where we are in doubt as to whether it was adopted from Chancery Standard, or as to whether it was an original one of the Celys\u27. This comes from the fact that Chancery Standard was developed "by imitating the written official language of the Londoners and by substituting a few of its usages to suit its own preference", in the process of which forms and spellings were adopted from some dialects. Now, the linguistic development seen in John Paston II will be a helpful clue to the problem. A few of the Chancery spellings are seen in his 86 letters left between 1452 and 1496; but some of his spellings are provincial (mixtures of East-Anglian spellings), and others resemble those of the Signet Office. This is because the language of the Signet Office was "a model worthy of imitation", and more important to him than Chancery Standard, as he was a courtier all through his life. He did not necessarily write by means of Chancery Standard, which had been accomplished as "a writing model for lawyers", in order to write his own private letters. He kept some of his old spellings if they were permitted among courtiers. This is why more non-Chancery spellings are found in the letters of John II than those of John III who was a successful lawyer and councillor. The Celys were wool merchants rather than courtiers, but their case is similar to John II\u27s. It is true that the Celys used a few of the Chancery spellings in their letters, but the movement towards standardization is not so remarkable as may be expected. Their language is said to be characterized by "mixtures of various spellings of various dialects". Their spellings, however, belong approximately to the language in London which might be a closer and more authoritative "standard language" to them than Chancery Standard, acquiring the position of another prominent class-dialect of the businessmen in and around the City. They wrote their business letters and their contracts in it. Here again, they were not professional scribes, and did not write pleas to the court nor petitions to Chancery. They wrote their own private business letters. Their letters would not have been nullified, even though they had written in their own language. Chancery Standard was being spread as "a model for writing" around the Celys, as is shown in the language development observed in A Book of London English edited by R. W. Chambers and Marjorie Daunt, but it might be counted as one of the dialects by the Celys, who had learned "various local dialects as the result of various influences to which they had been exposed early in life". Thus the influence of Chancery Standard upon the spelling system of the Celys must be said to be very slight, so far as we know it in their private letters. Chancery Standard, which had been developed as a standard language for lawyers, appears to have been still unfamiliar even to "the literati in and around the City" in 1480s
