ABSTRACT
'AND LOWYS, yf so be that I shewe the in my light Englissh as trewe conclusions touching this mater, and not oonly as trewe but as many and as subtile conclusiouns, as ben shewid in Latyne in eny comune tretys of the Astrelabie, konne me the more thank. And preie God save the King, that is lord of this language.' 1 Under an umbrella of modest disclaimers, Geoffrey Chaucer, in the 1390's, was advancing English into the realm of science, and if the Equatorie of the Planetis is really his, the deprecatory prologue to the Treatise on the Astrolabe must be discounted even more decidedly. For who can miss the note of patriotic achievement? It is appropriate that a Londoner, moving in a London circle of writers, Gower, Strode and Thomas Usk, should pen them. Two generations earlier, city clerks were carrying English into administration, Andrew Horn expounding the charters in the vernacular.
