Old velum scrap

[Suttonrog]

Just got back in to catch up.

Thanks very much Slam - it helps a lot.

Pru - thanks for suggesting it may be 14th century - I'll go digging for some comparisons.

Rog

[alpinecottage]

With the suggestion that it's 14th C in mind, is the very first word - 1407 Se(ptember)?

I'd be tempted to send a copy of the photo to the County Archives and ask for their opinion.

[Ruskie]

Thanks for the photos of the inside pages Rog!

It's all very intriguing and exciting! 

[PrueM]

Prue ... how should it be preserved if its (maybe) 14th century ??   Obviously NOT laminated !

I mentioned 14th C because I worked on a parchment once from that period that looks very similar in terms of the script.  It was one of quite a few that someone bought at auction - all the same age, all the same kind of thing (legal documents), all the same sort of size (about 25 cm long by 15 high).  My guess is that Rog's example is similar, but as I said, I'm no expert!

As for preservation, parchment is very resilient stuff.  It can survive in much better condition than paper of the same age.  If it's not got anything stuck to it and it's not particularly damaged, just keeping it in a plastic sleeve will be fine.

Cheers
Prue

[PrueM]

P.S.  Having found the paleography website I was looking around for all afternoon (on and off)...perhaps it is 15th century.  This cursive Document Hand looks very similar:
http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/scripts/examples/cursive7.htm

[slam]

If it is 14th century, I just had an exciting thought - it could be part of an old cartulary that's been discarded after the monastery was taken over.  Reformation loot!  Elizabethan and Jacobean antiquarians were always moaning about how these ms. had been trashed - one said when he was a young man he'd seen local gentry using ripped-out pages to clean out the barrels of their guns.  Lots of them probably were bought up as scrap by printers.

[Roger in Sussex]

I agree it looks very like 14th or 15th century writing, but think it says "Jacobi nunc Regis" pretty clearly in line 4, and suggest that it may be a scrap of some government document, as they did tend to retain handwriting styles over long periods.

I also agree with Slam that it looks like "Johanna" and wonder if the first line reads

? Johanna Fillere ? vid[ua] executrix test[amen]ti & vltime voluntatis Roberti Fillere defuncti

and the second line begins

? in com[itatum] Bedf[ordensem] husbandman ...

If one accepts these ideas for a moment, then it opens the possibility that the parties named might be related to these I found through the LDS site Family Search:

ROBERT FYLLER

Christened 26 Dec 1600, Maulden, Bedford, England

and

ROB FYLLER

Married 2 Oct 1600 to JOAN ARNOLD, Maulden, Bedford, England.

Both are stated to be extracted records

Only a speculation, of course, I expect someone can shoot it down   


Roger

[slam]

No, exciting! It looks like the truncated word before Com Beds could be '...den' which would agree with Maulden.  I certainly think you've nailed the first line.  Perhaps it's beginning to look less like an actual will than a legal record of a follow-up dispute to one? (Where there's a will, there's a row).

I think line three starts 'decem libri legl(-) monete Angli'  and the last line is something like '---  Rob[er]tus in vita sua. & p[re]dcta Johanna post  i[m]p[ri]mis Rob[er]ti mortem lice...'   Post imprimis makes no sense though!

I still feel it's early.  I was trying to get round the Jacobi word by wondering if it was a reference to a particular date like the feast of St James: but that's 25 July, which doesn't agree with the '..esimo die Octobr' mentioned immediately before. 

I don't know much about legal records.  I've seen only one Jacobean will in Latin.  I've seen a document relating to a legal dispute about a 1622 will and that was entirely in Latin too, but it was in secretary hand.  Although as it was copied into the register of wills I suppose it would be: the original may have come from a government office using a different hand entirely.

[Roger in Sussex]

Slam, I hadn't thought of the start of line two being Maulden truncated to "...den". That does seem a possibility, and would support my thinking.

I've felt all along that it didn't seem to read like an actual will, but rather as something legal deriving from a will, in which case the said will would have had to have reached probate in order to raise a legal issue. So presumably the probate and the will itself would have to have been recorded somewhere?

It could well make the interpretation and/or dating of this slip of vellum easier if the original will could be found.

Roger