Comments on: To the honourable judges

By: Sharon

Sharon — Fri, 04 Feb 2005 15:27:08 +0000

I was asking for it when I said he was consistent with his g’s; in fact he forms them in two different ways. I am officially an idiot. Some of the g’s are closed across the top with a separate horizontal stroke, quite different. But then others do look like y’s. So you’re absolutely right, it could be a g after all. Jeez, these people can be a pain in the ass. (Him and his ilk, not you.) Why do I do this? Why don’t I just do the sensible thing and work with print sources? Or become one of those modernists?

By: Andrew C

Andrew C — Fri, 04 Feb 2005 12:45:40 +0000

Definitely -yate and not -gate? Are you sure? Look at the ‘g’ in “height” (four lines above our mystery word), or the ‘g’ in “though” (the line above that) or the ‘g’ in “following” (the line above that). Then look at the ‘y’ in “Humbly” (at the beginning of the petition) or the ‘y’ in “unruly” (three lines below that). Then look back at our mystery word. It’s -gate, isn’t it? I’m sure of it. *squints at computer screen, ruins eyesight* This scribe forms his y’s with a vertical tail, his g’s with a more flamboyant curly tail.

By: Sharon

Sharon — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 12:59:34 +0000

I’m still liking ‘minioryate’ as a kind of bastardised variant of ‘minorate’, which does in fact make sense (and in my experience is an oddly plausible kind of mis-spelling). I’m absolutely certain that it is not meant to be mitigate. That’s too far off the first letters to call ‘scribal error’; plus, it’s definitely -yate not -gate. (This scribe has a particular and consistent way of writing small g.) Mitigate is no go; there’s just too much wrong with it. But it’s something handy, along with these much worse examples (!), to point out to students that reading deciphering handwritten documents isn’t always straightforward. And that sometimes you have to be really anal and pedantic.

The reference to parishes in the first petition probably simply reflects the importance of the parish as a local social and administrative unit at the time, rather than suggesting any particular link to the church. I have a whole pile of images of depositions to go with the petition, and I don’t know when I’ll get to transcribing them (when I should also be able to get some dates…), but I can tell you that it was about the collection of taxes – the excise, I think, which was a new introduction in the 40s (I forget the exact date) to raise money for Parliament. And the second petition arises from laws forbidding the erection of cottages on common lands without a licence from JPs.

Petitions are used to do all sorts of things, and I love them. You get petitions for pardons; requests for exemption from obligations such as jury service (or the lifting of a fine for defaulting) or serving as a constable; complaints about negligent officials and various sorts of misbehaviour. Then there are petitions from paupers who have been having difficulty getting poor relief (these are mostly but not always addressed to JPs at Quarter Sessions). There is something really interesting about this sort of direct appeal, sometimes straight over the heads of more local authorities, from extremely poor people (though often with the help and support of better off people) to high-up judges. The language is of course extremely deferential, but that’s the required convention; people are working the system of paternalism and patronage right from the ‘bottom’ of the social hierarchy.

(And sometimes, I have to say, petitioners are not altogether truthful, in their efforts to get the result they want. Although our man here probably really is very poor. But I tend to be sceptical about people who claim to be very poor, old, sick, feeble etc when they’re trying to get out of serving their turn as a constable.)

By: Andrew C

Andrew C — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 11:47:25 +0000

Another vote for “mittigate” — it’s the only word that seems to make sense in that context. I agree the middle letters look more like “u” or ‘n” than “tt”, but it could just be a scribal error. (“Scribal error” is always a good excuse when a word doesn’t seem to say what you think it must be intended to say.) And the scribbly bit in the middle looks like several letters crossed out — another sign (perhaps) of a scribe writing carelessly and at speed.

Is the first document dated? Without a date, it’s hard to guess what the riot might have been about — but presumably it was an anti-parliamentarian disturbance of some sort in the mid-1640s. The mention of “parishes” implies it was a parish-based disturbance — perhaps centred on the parish church? Interesting, the assumption that the fines were simply for the purposes of deterrence and wouldn’t actually be collected — the emphasis seems to be on prevention rather than punishment. The second document is more straightforward — and interesting, obviously, as an example of a ‘very poor’ person seeking, and getting, legal protection.

These two documents will make great starting-points for discussion. I wish I could go back to university and enrol as a student on your course!

By: Sharon

Sharon — Sat, 29 Jan 2005 19:41:07 +0000

PS: I considered ‘mitigate’, which as you say would also make sense in that context. But I’m pretty sure it’s not.

By: Sharon

Sharon — Sat, 29 Jan 2005 19:01:17 +0000

Indeed. I should see if I have any good examples to put up, but in many documents Latin is written in a quite different hand to English. (Except Latin indictments which have a fairly distinctive look of their own.) And it’s really difficult to get the hang of when you’re starting out. My impression, although I don’t know much about medieval hands, is that these are indeed much more ‘old fashioned’ hands than those in general use in the 17th century.

I’ll see if I can find something good.

By: New Kid on the Hallway

New Kid on the Hallway — Sat, 29 Jan 2005 18:41:07 +0000

I’m sorry to say that I have no magic solution for your word (of course, I don’t work w/early modern stuff either). I want to make it into something like “mitigate” but that’s more from the sense of the sentence than from any clear reading of the letters (which my screen doesn’t reproduce that well).

What mostly struck me is how different the handwriting of the Latin is compared to the English, and how the Latin handwriting looks virtually identical to the 15th c stuff I read. It’s closer to the hand of the second petition, but not quite the same. I have to wonder to what influences the evolution of the hands and whether certain hands linger in certain legal contexts.

Of course, it could also just be a fluke.