Archbishop matthew parker, in the preface to his 1574 edition of Asser's Life of Alfred, explains that he has chosen to set the (Latin) text in an ‘Anglo-Saxon’ typeface imitating insular minuscule script to help his reader begin to learn Old English. One of the reasons that knowing Old English is beneficial, he argues, is that it will help with local etymology:

Parker, however, does not go on to explain why one would want to learn the ancient place names or understand the derivations of modern ones; this, apparently, is self-explanatory to him. The drive to understand local names was so ingrained as to be invisible to Parker, at least, and probably to many of his contemporaries. It could motivate people to learn Old English, but what motivated it? The next three chapters will examine Nowell's and Lambarde's research into place names and local history and how they interacted with the discourses that impelled the early modern vogue for chorography, of which place-name etymology is a part.