This paper explores the other side of standardization by looking at one of the early modern regional varieties of English that remained outside the "consensus dialect" (Wright, 2000: 6). Drawing on Agha's (2003) framework of "enregisterment," I examine a selection of literary representations of the 'northern' dialect that are now included in "The Salamanca Corpus" (García-Bermejo Giner et al., 2011-), as well as contemporary lexicographical evidence on northern words. My aim is to provide a window into contemporary ideas that saw and constructed the North as the 'other', whilst showing, as a result, that such views were immediately relevant to how the dialect and their speakers were imagined and represented alongside the emerging standard. To do so, I undertake a twofold quantitative and qualitative analysis of the evidence to identify the repertoire of forms that were associated with the dialect and the values attributed to such forms.