by cock and pie

[angevin2]

nineweaving linked to the National Archive's paleography tutorial a couple of days ago, and I have sort of become addicted to it, because it is fun and because I feel sort of inept for having a Ph.D. in Renaissance lit and yet being unable to read Elizabethan secretary hand (although granted it is pretty hard to read). If I could actually go to the British

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[tempestsarekind]

I feel sort of inept for having a Ph.D. in Renaissance lit and yet being unable to read Elizabethan secretary hand

Tell me about it: I feel like this all the time. Anyway, thanks for the link!

As for mince pies:

"[Richard] Baines had studied at Cambridge some years before Marlowe, had taken his MA in 1576, and then travelled to the seminary at Rheims as a candidate for the Catholic priesthood. In fact, however, he was - whether for profit or through genuine conviction - a secret heretic. Throughout his stay at the college he did all he could to undermine his fellow seminarians' morale and to stir up disaffection by propagating views resembling those of which he was later to accuse Marlowe, and with which indeed he may have indoctrinated him. More trivially, he was alleged to have tempted his colleagues to eat meat pies on fast days." (Stanley Wells, Shakespeare and Co. 97, my emphasis)

Clearly, mince pies were serious religious and therefore state business!

[ancarett]

It's fun to rummage around in the State Papers and see what turns up. I get lots of Thomas Cromwell's memoranda which were nothing more than to-do lists. You know "thank Lady Lisle for the deer, winter clothing for Lady Margaret (in prison). . . ."

The more you immerse yourself in the hand, the easier it becomes. But it takes three days of non-stop reading of 16th century handwriting before the little mental shift takes hold in my brain!