ABSTRACT
The present transcription has been prepared following the general guidelines outlined in Preston and Yeandle’s English Handwriting 1400-1650.26 The spelling and diction used in the relevant source, whether rendered by Hawkins, Melville or Maunsell, is maintained with three exceptions: where a tilde appears over a letter in the original, indicating the need to supply an ‘m’ or an ‘n’ immediately afterwards, the missing ‘m’ or ‘n’ is supplied in a contrasting typeface (in italics when the word is transcribed in roman type, in roman type when the word is transcribed in italics); superior letters have been lowered tacitly; and missing letters have been supplied in italics. Angled brackets (< >) indicate crossed out passages. Wherever possible, the formatting of the original manuscript has also been maintained. In addition, the transcription of material from Melville’s volume maintains, to the extent possible, the scribe’s careful distinction between Secretary and Italic hand (see Figures 3 and 4). In the present transcription, Secretary hand has been rendered with italics and Italic hand with standard type. Although this may be the opposite of Melville’s intended effect (it seems likely that he used the Italic hand to convey the emphasis of italic type in the original print, defaulting to the more informal Secretary hand for the bulk of his copying), this choice has been made in order to preserve as closely as possible the appearance of the manuscript.
