A document for teaching/practicing English Secretary Hand

Today I am posting images of a seventeenth-century manuscript "particular" of land in Dymock, Gloucestershire. But rather than researching and discussing this text as a historical document, I present it as a tool for teaching English paleography. The manuscript's fairly easy secretary hand makes it suitable for beginners, and its illustration of scribal conventions (abbreviations, numbers, insertions) and material practices (folding, watermark) makes it ideal for discussing several aspects of early modern English paleography.

I have presented these images separately from their transcriptions so as to allow for viewers to "test themselves" on each line of the document. (Since Blogger's formatting capabilities leave much to be desired, I have used hyperlinks to replicate the interface of "checking" a user transcription against the "right answer".) 

But before I get to the images, here is a link to what is probably the web's best tutorial in English secretary hand (the "handwriting course" from Cambridge University's "Scriptorium" resource). The same site's "alphabets" guide is an excellent tool for checking letter-forms. 


SEGMENT ONE:

First two lines:

 

 

transcription

Third line:

transcription

Fourth line:

transcription

Fifth line:

transcription

Sixth line:

transcription

Seventh line:

 

 

 

transcription

Eighth line:

transcription

SEGMENT TWO:

Line 1:

transcription

Lines 2-3:

transcription

Lines 4-5:

transcription

Lines 6-7:

transcription

Lines 8-9:

transcription

Line 10:

transcription

 
SEGMENT THREE:

First line:

transcription

Second line: 

transcription

Third line:

transcription

Fourth line:

transcription

Fifth line:

transcription

Sixth line:

transcription

Seventh line:

transcription

SEGMENT FOUR:

transcription

 
I'll continue this post next week with images from the rest of the document, including its watermark.