The Masters of Chancery had no qualms about taking on literary genius either: they preferred “not” to Chaucer’s “nat,” “but” for his “bot,” “these” for “thise,” “thorough” for “thurgh.” The men from Westminster knew best. This standard still admits of a lot of variation and we are not going to see a spoken standard until much later, but English was being square-bashed into its first drilled lines.
