1460 local officials followed suit.
Like other medieval English institutions, the Chancery had evolved from an arm of the royal household into an administrative secretariat led a powerful Chancellor. All correspondence from King and Par- liament, all petitions, proclamations, records, indentures, summonses, and writs, were written by the Chancery. And just as all Chancery clerks came to write in a distinctive "Chancery script," so too their words acquired linguistic uniformity when they...