{"id":2726,"date":"2024-11-03T10:59:57","date_gmt":"2024-11-03T10:59:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crimesofthecenturies.com\/?p=2726"},"modified":"2025-07-15T15:21:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T14:21:10","slug":"elizabethan-handwriting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crimesofthecenturies.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/03\/elizabethan-handwriting\/","title":{"rendered":"Elizabethan handwriting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Elizabethan handwriting \u2013 the \u2018decoding\u2019 thereof\u2019 \u2013 isn\u2019t something I\u2019m exactly expert at. But that does mean my \u2018beginner\u2019s guide\u2019 is written from experience as a beginner, so hopefully useful to others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1500s and 1600s handwriting<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Delve far enough back into archive records and you will hit the shock of \u2018I can\u2019t read a word of that!\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the handwriting we use today (not that we DO write much by hand today) is very different from that used in the times of the Tudors and early Stuarts (and their predecessors).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What makes it even harder is that some records, even that \u2018late\u2019 are written in what I call \u2018legal Latin\u2019. The Latin used by clerks and by clerics that bears only passing relation to classical Latin \u2013 at least when you try to run a phrase through a translator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until this summer, I hadn\u2019t attempted to get to grips with Elizabethan handwriting (note: I\u2019m using \u2018Elizabethan\u2019 as \u2018Elizabethan and Jacobean\u2019 would get clunky, but this does cover Jacobean handwriting as well). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then I copied chunks of records from that era at Carlisle Archives<\/a>, which rather forced the issue!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elizabethan handwriting \u2013 Where to start<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A few weeks teaching myself Elizabethen handwriting hardly makes me an expert. I started with some examples of alphabets I found online. But there are flaws to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you are looking at a word in a document, it\u2019s pain to have to look through an A-Z of examples for something similar. (Old-style to modern is a better way to list them). And single letters as examples don\u2019t always help whole words, where the writer runs letters together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, and of course, handwriting was as individual then as now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

lll and all that<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The worst \u2018running together\u2019 issue is letters like \u2018u\u2019, \u2019n\u2019 and \u2018m\u2019. Which can look like a chunk of \u2018uuuu\u2019s. That\u2019s hard to illustrate in type. But an example is that in a sans serif font, you can\u2019t start a headline with a work beginning \u2018ill\u2019 (eg \u2018illegal) as it comes out as \u2018lll\u2019 (\u2018lllegal\u2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found it easier to start with a rent roll. A literal roll of parchment, with line after line of names. There were going to be lots of Johns, Thomases, Williams, Roberts. And lots of Cumbrian surnames<\/a>: Musgrave, Lowther, Wilson, Gibson, Robinson, Hutton, Armstrong\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cracking those gave me something to compare other words to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Secret code meets Magic Eye<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you like code word puzzles, you know to look out for common endings: 2 7 24 repeated may well be either \u2018ing\u2019 or \u2018ion\u2019. If a lot of words end in 17, that could be s. Etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Elizabeth handwriting (as today’s), words like \u2018the,\u2019 \u2018and,\u2019 \u2018his\u2019 are going to crop up a lot. And when you\u2019ve cracked those, they help you with others. Like, er, \u2018others\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I\u2019ve found sometimes, coming back to a line I couldn\u2019t make out before, there is that Magic Eye moment \u2013 remember those? The moment when you are staring at a colourful pattern of fish and can suddenly see the hidden \u20183D\u2019 image of a whale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s a list of names I use as a starting point:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Elizabethan<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elizabethan handwriting \u2013 the \u2018decoding\u2019 thereof\u2019 \u2013 isn\u2019t something I\u2019m exactly expert at. But that does mean my \u2018beginner\u2019s guide\u2019 is written from experience as a beginner, so hopefully useful to others. 1500s and 1600s handwriting Delve far enough back into archive records and you will hit the shock of \u2018I can\u2019t read a word […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2727,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[443],"class_list":["post-2726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family-history","tag-palaeography"],"yoast_head":"\nElizabethan handwriting - Cumbrian Characters<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Elizabethan handwriting can make your heart sink. 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