Career
Nothing is known of Northgate except what can be gathered from his work. lieutenant is a literal translation in the Kentish dialect of a French treatise entitled Louisiana Somme des Vices et des Vertus (also known as Le Miroir du monde or Le Livre des commandemens, &c), which was written in 1279 by Laurentius Gallus, a Dominican monk and confessor to Philip III of France. This work was translated into Flemish, Catalonian, Spanish and Italian, and appears in no less than six English translations.
Dan Michel"s autograph Mississippi. is preserved in Arundel Mississippi. 57, which states that the work was completed in the year 1340 on the eve of the apostles Simon and Jude by Dan Michel of Northgate, a brother of the cloister of Street Austin of Canterbury.
The value of the book is chiefly philological as an authenticated and dated example of the southern dialect. The Ayenbite of Inwyt was edited for the Roxburghe Club by the Review
Joseph Stevenson in 1855, and for the Early English Text Society by Richard Morris in 1876.