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The Key to the Family Deed Chest: How to Decipher and Study Old Documents / Being a Guide to the Reading of Ancient Manuscripts cover

The Key to the Family Deed Chest: How to Decipher and Study Old Documents / Being a Guide to the Reading of Ancient Manuscripts

Chapter 19: FOOTNOTES:
By Emma Elizabeth Thoyts
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About This Book

A practical manual for beginners outlines methods for reading and interpreting historical manuscripts and legal records. It explains handwriting analysis, materials and marks of ink and paper, common abbreviations, and the paleographical features of languages often encountered such as Saxon, Norman-French, and medieval Latin. Chapters treat the form and terminology of deeds, manor and court rolls, monastic charters, parish registers, and local account books, and provide examples, transcription tips, bibliographic pointers, and warnings about misreadings and forged or altered documents.

APPENDIX.
LEGAL MEMORY.
(See page 42.)

‘Whitchurch Rectory,

‘Reading,

‘October 12, 1892.

‘Dear Miss Thoyts,

‘I must even send you an instant reply to your note, in order to satisfy your perplexity.

‘I was many years searching for the reason why legal memory began with Richard I. I once asked an eminent Q.C. the question, and though he had been a Law Lecturer, and was shortly afterwards put upon the Bench, he could not tell me why—he only knew the fact.

‘It is one of the signs, good or bad, of the present times, that your sex will not, like their mothers and grandmothers, be satisfied with being told the fact, but will be told why.

‘Now the “why” of this is just as follows: The Norman Conquest upset a great many Saxon titles to estates, but not all. And on the voidance of a Norman who had no title but his own right hand, the Saxon would try to recover, and, I suppose, not unfrequently succeeded, by reason of being on the spot and putting on the Norman’s shoes while they were warm. Hence endless litigations, because the more distant Norman kin inherited at least this much—contempt for a Saxon.

‘By A.D. 1179 things began to settle down and Norman and Saxon to be amalgamated, and it was then, or perhaps rather later, agreed, in the High Courts, that in questions of title you should not go behind the above date.

‘Now this is not inconsistent with what you may have read in Selden, vol. ii. I have not read it, but I offer this solution—that it (i.e., Selden, vol. ii.) does not mean to speak of manorial law in respect of the High Court of Justice of the Realm, but of the intra-manorial regulations of court leets and court barons.

‘Yours sincerely,

‘JOHN SLATER.’

THE END.

Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster Row, London.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] From photos kindly lent by Mr. A. Harrison, of Theale.

[2] See Appendix.

[3] The property of the Earl of Fingall from his ancestors the Wollascots.

[4] A complete copy of the Chartulary was made by me through the kindness of the Earl of Fingall.

[5] A list of French Bishops will be found in ‘Gallia Christiana,’ or in ‘Neustria Pia.’

[6] This also contains a good glossary of Anglo-Saxon words.

[7] Who has kindly revised this little volume.

[8] Only procurable second-hand.

Transcriber’s Notes:
1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been corrected silently.
2. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have been retained as in the original.