Appendix 1

PALAEOGRAPHY AND LATIN FOR FAMILY HISTORIANS

There are two apparent difficulties facing family historians when venturing beyond 1837. One is that the handwriting is very different to our own. Almost all documents are manuscript, i.e. handwritten. Over the centuries, handwriting has changed considerably. Both the size and shape of letters, as well as the spelling, varied and is unlike our own. Furthermore, the language used is often Latin, especially in legal documents, up to 1733. And even then, this is not the Classical Latin as used by the Romans or in the few schools where the language is still taught. Rather it is a bastardized form. Spelling can be erratic as abbreviations are commonly used and proper nouns are far removed in spelling from our own period. Numbers are often expressed as Roman numerals.

Yet the researcher should not despair. There are some very useful guides. Eileen Gooder’s Latin for Local Historians is one. It takes the reader through various documents which a family historian might encounter, and gives examples on which a beginner should work prior to attempting a ‘real’ manuscript. The Borthwick Institute (referred to in Chapter 13) sells a number of Borthwick Wallets which include further examples of copies of different forms of document which a researcher is likely to encounter. There is also a very useful guide on TNA website. It gives useful advice and also ten examples of handwriting which the reader is invited to transcribe as practice before ‘real’ documents are attempted, beginning with the least difficult and progressing in difficulty as the reader grows in confidence.

Possession of the guides mentioned above are recommended. So, too, are medieval Latin word lists, such as E McLaughlin, Simple Latin for Family Historians (1999) and J Morris, A Latin Glossary for Family and Local Historians (1989), for they concentrate on the words most likely to be found in the documents you will be examining.

Some handwriting is very good indeed. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century formal documents, such as quarter session order books, were written in a very clear hand. And, as we shall note in the next appendix, many medieval documents have already been calendared so can be seen without recourse to the originals. Most researchers, having dealt with post 1831 census returns, will already probably have dealt with tricky handwriting.

The best tip is to read the documents very slowly indeed, letter by letter, rather than word by word and certainly not sentence by sentence. You may need to transcribe (i.e. copy) the document in order to read it. Retain the original spelling and do not at first try to translate it into modern English. Begin by examining the first word and identifying each letter and then building up words and sentences from there. If a letter or word cannot be identified at first, leave a blank or put a question mark by the letter/word. The context of the other words may become apparent as time goes on. The same word may be repeated and it may be more readable on the next occasion. Depending on what type of document it is, standard phrases will tend to appear therein. Once these have been identified, this will make reading the document easier. These may then help decipher other words in the same document.