The influence of dictaminal treatises in England was weak throughout the Mi
ddle Ages and largely restricted to a limited number of royal clerks and a
few academics. Most practitioners were royal chancery clerks who dealt with
foreign and ecclesiastical powers. This article focuses chiefly on the use
of dictaminal letters by middle class English citizens int he fifteenth an
d earlier sixteenth centuries. These letters show little significant influe
nce of continental or English dictaminal theory but are chiefly either spra
wling news bulletins like the Paston letters or, more commonly, imitations
of the royal missives from the Signet or Privy Seal offices. As the fifteen
th century ended even these vestigial dictaminal forms were replaced among
the middles classes by business formats, such as the letter of credit, alth
ough they retained some use among the upper classes into the sixteenth cent
ury and in some royal missives into the eighteenth century. The article con
cludes with suggestions on ways contemporary genre theory might be usefully
applied to analyze the rise and decline of the ars dictaminis.