MANUSCRIPT INTERPRETATION

COUNTY (comitatus)

A county is often referred to as shire which dates back to Anglo-Saxon times when the shire was an administrative area divided into hundreds. The shires were fully established by the reign of Edgar in the mid-900s. The shire was administered by an alderman and a sheriff, originally known as a shire-reeve, who presided over the shire court. After the Norman Conquest, the county was introduced and officially superseded shire although shire continued in use and still exists today in many modern county names such as Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire etc.

HUNDRED (hundredum)

The administrative hundred was a unit of English local government and taxation, smaller than a shire, which existed well into the nineteenth century. Originally, the term referred to a group of 100 hides. A hide was an ancient unit of land required to support one peasant family. In the ancient areas of Danish settlement, hundreds were usually called wapentakes (see below). The hundred had a court which met monthly and dealt with private disputes and criminal matters, usually settled by customary law. Originally everyone resident within the hundred was expected to attend, but attendance became restricted to certain tenants only.

WAPENTAKE (wapentachium)

A wapentake was an administrative areas similar to the hundred but restricted to certain areas only, namely Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and Rutland. The term wapentake is of Scandinavian origin and meant the taking of weapons; it later signified the clash of arms by which the people assembled in a local court expressed assent. Danish influence was strong in those English counties where wapentakes existed.

PARISH (parochia)

There are both civil and ecclesiastical parishes. A civil parish is a local government administrative area which evolved from the ancient ecclesiastical parishes. The two were only formally segregated in the nineteenth century. Modern civil parishes existed after the Local Government Act 1894 and they now undertake the secular functions previously done by the parish vestry. Historically, civil parishes mainly covered rural and smaller urban areas. A civil parish may be a town, village or even a neighbourhood with its governing body being an elected parish council.

Ancient parishes, originally based on the manors, were long established in England by the time of the Norman Conquest. Some large manors were sub-divided into several parishes. Initially both the church and incumbent frequently benefitted from the patronage of the lord of the manor but then in many instances became the responsibility of the Catholic Church.

Parish boundaries hardly changed despite changes to manors' extents. However, when manor boundaries changed, usually to become smaller units, then this would have justified the foundation of a parish with its own incumbent and vestry.  The fact the boundaries remained consistent until the nineteenth century is beneficial to family historians.

Until the time of Henry VIII, parishes managed ecclesiastical matters with the manor undertaking local administration. The church began to replace the manor court in administration and levied a tithe. Responsibilities such as relief of the poor passed from the lord of the manor to the ecclesiastical parish. The vestries consisted of all the ratepayers of the parish. As parishes grew in population size, it became difficult to hold open vestry meetings, so in many urban areas the select vestry was formed which effectively improved efficiency. By the eighteenth century, because of falling religious membership and the popularity of nonconformity, the parish progressively lost its powers to civil local authorities such as the boards of guardians and sanitary districts. The various local authorities levied their own rate in the parish so the church rate ceased to be levied. The ancient parishes became two distinct bodies - civil and ecclesiastical - during the nineteenth century.

BOROUGH (burgus) 

The borough was an urban area recognised by a royal charter which granted certain privileges, autonomy, and ultimately incorporation. The borough usually functioned outside the general administrative hierarchy of the county, shire and hundred but from the sixteenth century, their importance as local government areas declined. The reform of municipal corporations in 1835 transformed boroughs into modern local government units, and in 1888 the Local Government Act established county boroughs which were empowered to act independently of administrative counties.

VILLAGE (villa)

A village in the UK is a compact settlement of houses, smaller in size than a town, and generally based on agriculture or in some areas, mining, quarrying or sea fishing. The major factors in this type of settlement were the location of water sources and the organization of agriculture and landholdings. Today some villages and many hamlets have disappeared, sometimes leaving behind a church or manor house. Other villages have grown and merged with urban towns and cities, and many have become dormitory locations having lost many of their original amenities. The main difference between a hamlet and a village was that the latter had a church. Some civil parishes contained more than one village. If a village was the principal settlement in a civil parish, then any administrative body was the parish council.

Numbers, dates, and currency terms were complicated in early modern English manuscripts. The complexity arose from the fact that England incorporated systems from other cultures and regions. Things like numbers, calendars, and currency were influenced by Roman law, Anglo-Saxon practices and Norman French conventions.

For most family historians, dating conventions in documents can cause challenges even as late as the early nineteenth century. They become even more challenging in medieval documents. Early documents may be dated by reference to a day of the week, a religious feast day and the year of the reigning monarch. Even when a recognisable date is used it may not always be as it first appears.

Various dating systems were used for different types of documents and exact dates began to appear on documents from the thirteenth century onwards.

REGNAL YEARS  - A year in the reign of a Monarch

AD SYSTEM - Julian/Gregorian calendar

FESTIVALS - Saints' days etc (lists of days are available on the internet)

EXCHEQUER YEARS  - 30 Sept to 29 Sept

PAPAL YEARS  - A year in the reign of Pope (works in the same way as regnal years)

EPISCOPAL YEARS  - recognised church years.

Regnal Years

From ancient times until today, it was common practice to date various documents by the year of the reigning monarch. A regnal year is calculated from the date of the accession of the monarch, with each year changing on the anniversary of the accession. In order to interpret such dates, researchers need to know the date on which a monarch acceded to the throne. The best resource for this is Cheyney's Handbook of Dates.

Sometimes regnal years present particular difficulties. Some regnal years began on the date of coronation, not the accession. For example, King John, latterly known as Ascension Day which today is a moveable feast falling on a different date each year. Sometimes reigns of monarchs could be little more than a year long and sometimes they could be less than a year. Another challenge is that because a regnal year is normally calculated between fixed dates, the moveable feasts such as Easter sometimes occur twice in one regnal year.

Between the thirteenth and fiteenth centuries it was very common for documents to be dated by reference to the day of the week and to a nearby religious feast date. Thus a document might be dated The Tuesday before the feast of St James 6 Henry VII. So dates have to be calculated using various sources.

Sometimes quarter days were used in documents. These were the four days in a year when rents were traditionally paid in England; they were also based on religious feast days.

Lady Day, 25 March - the feast of the Annunciation

Midsummer Day, 24 June - the feast of St. John the Baptist

Michaelmas, 29 September - the feast of St. Michael and All Angels

Christmas Day, 25 December – known as the feast of the Nativity

Law Terms

Many official documents were dated to a law term. Such dates arose because there were certain times of the year when legal business could not take place and cases would have to be suspended. This is particularly true for Chancery cases.  Legal matters were conducted when they stood a chance of being dealt with continuously. The four main periods when this was possible became the law terms, some of which had moveable dates.

Michaelmas - 1st of October to the 21st of December.

Hilary - 11th of January to the Wednesday before Easter Sunday.

Easter - the second Tuesday after Easter Sunday, to the Friday before Whit Sunday.

Trinity - the second Tuesday after Whit Sunday to the 31st of July.

Documents dated by law term will normally show the name of the term, followed by a regnal year. Documents dated in this way include a range of legal papers, parliamentary bills and Acts, and documents such as final concords and common recoveries.

Exchequer Year

The Exchequer used a different system dating. The Exchequer year ran from Michaelmas to Michaelmas - 30 September-29 September, and the date was usually assigned the regnal year in which the year ended. Unfortunately, this convention was not always followed. In some reigns the Exchequer year was given the number of the conventional regnal year in which it began. An easy way to resolve this is by searching on the National Archives Discovery specifying the word or phrase, wildcarded *, the series code of the document you are looking for and a range of years. The results should reveal the calendar year and the Exchequer year; however, it may not always work!

Undated

Sometimes family historians will find documents that are not dated at all. Deciding upon a date then requires skills based on palaeography (the type of handwriting) and the style of the document or its contents.

Many documents record financial transactions so researchers will come across a wide variety of historical accounting records. They may range from single vouchers relating to payment of a few pence to labouring for their work, household and estate accounts to large ledgers recording the turnover of major business concerns and even details of debtors and bankrupts.

Many of the older accounting methods used by estate and government are no longer in use. In order to interpret what the records show, researchers need to be familiar with the book-keeping methods of the time, the currency in use and the standard accounting principles commonly in use.

Units of money likely to be found in most documents

¼d     farthing

½d    halfpenny, haypny or ha'penny.

¾d    three farthings

1d       penny

2d      tuppence

3d      threepenny bit, thrupny or thruppence

4d      groat - in circulation until 1662 revived briefly in the mid-nineteenth century.

6d      sixpence, tanner

1s        shilling, bob

2s       two shillings, florin

2s 6d  half a crown

5s       crown

10s      ten shillings, half sovereign

£1        one pound, sovereign

£1 1s   one pound and one shilling, guinea.

A mark, 13s 4d.  Not a coin, but was a common amount used in accounting.

Financial transactions have been done for hundreds of years. Records are handwritten and the use of unfamiliar words and phrases can present difficulties for researchers as they may not always recognise them.

Payments for goods and services were made using one of the following methods - in kind, in cash or on credit.

A bill is a demand for payment for services or goods provided; it might be itemised or just give the total amount owed. An invoice is a similar document usually sent with the goods or rendered at the time of the service to which it relates. Until around the sixteenth century, it was usual for financial records to be written in Latin and to use Roman numerals.

Receipts, vouchers and quittances were methods of showing a payment had been made. A voucher is normally associated with estate accounts. On landed estates, the manager or steward collected paid bills and receipts together which were collectively known as vouchers. A quittance was a note verifying the payment of a debt or obligation and often related to marriage settlements. Quittances were sometimes called 'releases' because the person was released from their debt or obligation. It was common to find that a receipt had survived but not the bill or vice versa.

Household accounting was usually done by the woman of the house or the housekeeper. The information was essentially about the private use of the household money and how it was spent, and so this may have been recorded in different ways.

Many estate and manorial accounts were written in Latin until the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, but they too usually used Roman numerals instead of Arabic numerals. Accounts covered Michaelmas to Michaelmas or from Lady Day to the following Lady Day. Accounts of manors were normally kept by the steward or bailiff.

Various terms were used in land measurement. An acre, which could vary in size, was based on how much land was needed to support a family or what could be ploughed in a year.  Other unfamiliar words you may come across are a bovate, fee, virgate, rood and perch. Deciphering these units of weights and measurements in historical documents can be a research challenge.

Virtually every old unit of measurement up to the mid-twentieth century has now been replaced although some such as miles and pints are still in current use.

Standardisation of weights and measures was a long and complicated process. Imperial measurements were those used by the Romans, but the Imperial measurements used in other countries often varied so there was not what could be called a standard system.

The Imperial system in England and Wales consisted of three main types of weight measurements each used for different purposes. 

Avoirdupois weight

Troy weight

Apothecaries' weight

The standard weight in each section was the pound abbreviated to lb from the Latin word libra. Pounds were divided into ounces (oz). Some commodities were sold by volume or capacity as opposed to their weight. Vocabulary also varied between different regions of the British Isles.

Avoirdupois weight was used to measure large and bulky items, and was the most common weight measurement, eventually becoming the standard for virtually all weights.

Troy weight was used to measure small amounts of precious metals or gemstones. The Troy pound was abolished by the Weights and Measures Act of 1878, but the Troy ounce is still in use today when measuring silver and gold.

Apothecaries' weight was as the name suggests used by apothecaries or pharmacists to measure quantities of drugs and included the grain.

The standard Imperial linear measurement was the mile, divided into furlongs, chains, yards, feet and inches. Originally the mile was based on a Roman measurement of 1,000 paces. A furlong is derived from the distance that could be ploughed by an ox without a rest. A foot was the length of a man's foot, and inch was literally one twelfth derived from the Latin word uncia.

Standard linear measurement also included the following measures.

3 barleycorns - 1 inch

12 inches - 1 foot

3 feet - 1 yard

5½ yards - 1 perch, pole or rod

40 poles - 1 furlong

8 furlongs - 1 mile

3 miles - 1 league

There were many different measurements of land used well into the seventeenth century and which were measured against each other:

Acre - The area that could be ploughed by a team of eight oxen in one day.

Hide -  The area able to support a typical peasant family, ploughed in a year by a team of eight oxen.  A hide was made up of eight  oxgangs or bovates, or four virgates.

Many commodities were sold according to their volume or capacity. Volumes measured dry goods or liquids and the basic unit of volume was the gallon. There were different gallon measurements depending on what was being measured. The corn gallon, known as the Winchester Measure and used to measure dry goods, was 269 cubic inches. There was also an ale gallon, measuring 282 cubic inches, and a wine gallon measuring 231 cubic inches. In 1824 the government abolished all gallon measurements and substituted a new, standard Imperial gallon of 277.42 cubic inches. The Imperial gallon held ten avoirdupois pounds of water. The capacities of the other measurements of volume were adjusted to take account of this new gallon.

All these names and terms will be unfamiliar to many researchers but in order to get the best use of out old manuscripts and documents, it is worth your time to get to know them all and what they mean. 

Most numbers in old documents were written in Roman numerals. They will have been written in lower rather than uppercase. A single 1 or the last 1 in a series will resemble a modern j. e.g iiij = 4. Roman numerals, Arabic numerals, and abbreviations for Roman numbers might be combined to indicate a year.

Roman numerals is an ancient numbering system that is still used today. In the Roman numeral system, letters are used to represent fixed positive numbers. There are only seven Latin letters used in Roman numerals..

The Roman numeral system originated in Rome during the eighth and ninth centuries BC. The basic numerals used are I = 1, V = 5, X = 10, L = 50, C = 100, D = 500 and M = 1000. By combining these numerals together and adding or subtracting their values, numbers can be represented.

To effectively interpret Roman numerals it is important to understand their basic usage. In many documents Roman numerals are used when referring to years and dates, and also to record money. Roman numerals can be difficult to read for those who aren't familiar with them. However, interpretation is straightforward if you apply two simple rules.

- When a smaller numeral appears after a larger numeral, add the smaller numeral to the larger numeral.

- When a smaller numeral appears before a larger numeral, subtract the smaller numeral from the larger numeral.

If one or more symbols are placed after another letter add that amount.

VII = 7 (5 + 2 = 7)

LXXX = 80 (50 + 10 + 10 + 10 = 80)

MCCC = 1300 (1000+100 + 100 + 100 = 1300)

If a symbol is placed before another letter of greater value, subtract that amount.

CM = 900 (1000 – 100 = 900)

IX = 9 ( 10 – 1 = 9 )

XC = 90 (100 – 10 = 90)

MMXXIII = 2000 + 20 + 3 = 2023

This website will enable easy conversion from Roman Numerals https://www.romannumerals.org/converter

Knowing what type of document you are transcribing is helpful, and this can easily be identified by knowing the formulary.  It sounds complicated and perhaps a bit archaic but the word means a fixed form or pattern of words usually at the beginning of a document.  In some documents standard phrases appear throughout. Here are some examples.

WILLS – In the name of God amen

BONDS – Know all Men by these presents

DEED OF GIFT – Know all present and future … to have and to hold…. Rendering

BARGAIN & SALE and LEASE – This indenture…. Witnesseth

FINES – This is a final agreement

COMMON RECOVERIES – Name of reigning monarch

More information can be found in the Land records section.

This article has tried to explain how to best interpret old documents and manuscripts. It has covered unfamiliar names for administrative areas like wapentakes, a section on how dates, years and periods were named and groats, florins and guineas were covered in a section about money. More strange words were explained in the astonishing ways in which goods and lands were measured, and it ended with a section on Latin numbers and some familiar phrases you will see in old manuscripts! 

Do NOT let all this put you off exploring these many ancient papers...you never know what you might find, and there are several specific websites online which can help you. As the sub-title says...Manuscripts are not just letters and pen strokes!