The object of this paper is to present a depiction of various political, educational and linguistic processes which led to the development of Standard English. From its inception with King Ælfred in the late ninth century, through the demise of the standard after the Norman Conquest followed by its subsequent rise from the ashes in the fifteenth century, the paper will present all the major changes that affected both the English Standard itself and the attitude of the English people toward it. Putting a symbolic end with the publication of the Lyrical Ballads in 1798, a work attacking the idea of the use of prescriptive language for poetry, this discussion will be complete since the changes in the language after the eighteenth century no longer apply to the standard but to various stylistic and dialectal differences. Apart from various external developments surrounding the creation of the standardized variety of English, we will also show the internal (orthographic, morphological, syntactic, lexical etc) changes that shaped the face of Standard English through history. Starting with a short description of what is traditionally meant by the term Standard language (and more precisely Standard English), and followed by the explanation of which of the many standardized varieties of English is chosen as the topic, the paper will move on the main part, consisting of a two way description of historical and linguistic changes characteristic for each period. The division of the history of the English Standard is taken from N. F. Blake’s A History of the English Language.