Manuscripta juridica

Decisiones curiae supremae Scotiae - Practicks 1550-1577 .

December 1550 - June 1577. The items are numbered 1-414, see below. Foliation in Roman numbers. I have compiled lists of items in the present MS and have collated them to other MSS. It clearly appears that all other MSS derive from the present MS - directly or indirectly [{i}see also the pertinent remarks above{/i}]. Various observations mentioned below prove that those text passages which were written by the supervisor of the production of the present volume were not copied from another MS: the text originated from his pen. Either Sir Richard himself acted as author and also as supervisor, or he dictated to a secretary. It could be that his daughter served in the function of secretary. It is known that she often wrote for him, on dictation.

Handwriting of main text:

The text of Maitland's Practicks was written by several hands (see details below). Fol. 75r - 110v were written continuously, whereas fol. 1r-74v were written in many instalments - as evidenced by frequent changes in the colour of ink. All hands wrote more or less hastily, and some are therefore very difficult to read. Readers must be quite versatile as the character of the handwriting changes so often. Not only did the various scribes apply different types of writing, they also applied different spellings, and they differed in their attitudes towards anglicising the old Scots language. The task of deciphering the text is furthermore complicated by the fact that the ink of many pages is badly faded.

Different hands, discerned in the main text:

{i}The hand of the supervisor who directed the other scribes (at least during the first years) appears in the main text on:{/i} fol. 3v to 12v line 10, fol. 13v line 18 to 14r line 25, fol. 14v line 28 to 15r line 16, fol. 15r line 33 to 16v line 20, fol. 17r to 21v line 13, fol. 22r line 18 to 27v line 5, fol. 29r lines 18-23.

{i} Many other hands wrote the remainder of the text:{/i}.

Fol. 1r to 3r.

Fol. 12v line 11 to 13v line 17.

Fol. 14r line 26 to 14v line 27, fol. 16v line 21 to page's end.

Fol. 15r line 17 to 17r.

Fol. 21v line 14 to 22r line 17, fol. 31r line 6 to 35v line 2, fol. 36r line 4 to 42v line 20, fol. 44v to 45v line 24.

Fol. 27v line 6 to 29r line 17, fol. 29r line 24 to fol. 30r line 6. Fol. 30r line 8 to fol. 31r line 6.

Fol. 42v line 21 to 44r, fol. 45v line 25 ss ... etc., {i}hands keep changing frequently to fol. 75r line 2{/i}.

Fol. 75r line 3 to end of text on fol. 110v were written by one continuous hand.

Handwriting of headings:

On fol. 1r-35v the headings are written in the margins, mostly by the supervisor who directed the other scribes. The writing of headings was here done as a separate task. Even on folios on which the supervisor also wrote the main text (fol. 3v to 12v, etc.), he did not write the headings along with it. This can be seen from the fact that the ink of the headings is darker than the ink of the main text. From fol. 36r onward, in contrast, the headings were no longer written in the margins. They now figure in separate lines between the items of the main text, and their colour of ink no longer differs from the main text. This makes me think that the supervisor had in the mean time made up his mind that all items should have a heading, and that he had therefore added headings to the items written so far.

Handwriting of foliation:

Fol. 1-49 have old foliation in Roman numerals, in ink which differs in colour from the various shades of ink in the main text.

Handwriting of numbering of items:

The same hand which numbered the leaves has also numbered the items. On fol. 1r-48r, numbering 1-196 in Roman numbers, errors are corrected in Arabic figures. On fol. 49r-66r, Arabic numbers 197-254.

Large blank spaces fol. 2v, fol. 7v, fol. 21r, fol. 47v.

In one case, fol. 21r, the space was obviously left blank for the purpose of inserting additional text at a later time, as shown by the fact that the preceding text breaks off abruptly within an item = at the end of fol. 20v, in item nr. 94. The same may be true for fol. 47v, as the preceding text on fol. 47r ends abnormally and without date. For the other two cases, fol. 2v and fol. 7v, there is no evidence that the blank space was purposefully left open. In all four places, MS Orr and the other manuscripts which I have seen leave no blank space and do not have more text than Adv.MS.31.2.2 (i) has. This is yet a further argument in favour of the hypothesis that the present MS is Sir Richard's original.

Observations proving that the text originated while the 'supervisor' penned it.

(a) At times the supervisor, in the course of writing, cancelled what had just been written and replaced it by new text (e.g. fol. 3v, 4v, 6v). This would not have happened in copying from a model MS. The supervisor must have thought out the text, or must have written on dictation.

(b) The supervisor was fully aware of the meaning of the text, even of its specific legal meaning. In number of places where other manuscripts contain corrupt nonsensical text or leave words out, the present MS provides a wording which makes perfect sense - although that wording may be difficult to decipher.

(c) The supervisor was not sure where to apply the consonant 'h'. He wrote 'avand' instead of 'haveand', 'has' in place of 'as', 'Hest Nisbet' instead of 'East Nisbet', etc. Supposed that the supervision was not done by Sir Richard himself but by a secretary: could it be that the secretary was a Frenchman, Italian or Spaniard, unable to pronounce the consonant 'h' and thus unsure where to apply it?.

(d) The supervisor did not apply Scottish chancery characters. The shapes of characters rather resemble usage on the European continent. While this may suggest that a secretary from the European continent was at work, it does not exclude Sir Richard himself: he may have written in continental handwriting. By even stronger reason it does not exclude Sir Richard's daughter. It is known that Scottish females usually wrote in continental European characters, whereas Scottish chancery style of handwriting was mainly applied by males.

(e) Oddly enough, it furthermore appears that the supervisor suffered from dyslexia. Many uncommon phonetic spellings and in particular a great inconsistency in spelling point in this direction. She/he knew some Latin, but was not really well versed in that language. Wrong spellings of Latin words betray that she/he did often not understand the etymology of words: 'Discembris' instead of 'Decembris', 'ecsepit' instead of 'exceptit', 'decertitt' instead of 'desertit', 'decist' instead of 'desist', 'subced' instead of 'subsidy', etc.

(f) The same curious characteristics are known from yet another MS which surely came from Sir Richard Maitland's household: it is a volume of poems in Scots of which only remnants are left. They are today bound together with the famous folio MS of Sir Richard's collection of Scottish poetry: Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys Library 2553, there the pages 3-18 and 339-342. I have seen this Pepys MS. The handwriting of the poetry is indeed as desperately difficult to read as the one in the present MS. The watermark of the poetry is different, but this does not exclude a likelyhood that both MSS originated in the same studio. The watermark of the poetry shows a medium-sized jug with letters IB, on the lid five spikes with balls (unclear how many balls, probably two-one-three-one-two). See pag. 6 of the Pepys MS.

(g) The supervisor's hand shows many individual scribal characteristics, mentioned below. They show that she/he produced the text for personal use, and not as a neat copy meant to be read by other persons. The handwriting is therefore particularly difficult to decipher. In the beginning and middle of words, there is often no distinguishable difference between characters 'u' and 'a' and 'e'. All of them resemble a broad 'u'. The character o is also very similar to 'u', but it is written as a narrow 'u'. At the end of a word, the character 'e' is often just written as a wavy line, or is totally left out. A wavy line at the end, however, may at times indicate the character 'n'. Thus, 'n' and 'e' are not clearly distinguishable at the end of words. Furthermore, in the middle of words, the dot above the character 'i' is often broadened so as to blur the difference between character 'i' and broken character 'e'. Consequently there is no clear distinction between 'i' and 'e' either. Furthermore, characters 'f' and 's' look alike at the beginning and in the middle of words. At the end of words, however, the foot of the character 's' often curves to the right, prone to be misread as a character 'l' or even 'b'. Yet, the supervisor always wrote the 'l' with a large open loop above, whereas the 's' at the end of words has only a narrow closed loop above, or no loop at all, and the 's' is also less tall.

(h) The text passages written by the supervisor cease in the year 1558. This fact would match Sir Richard's curriculum vitae. It is known that he became increasingly blind as he grew older, and that he had completely lost his sight by 1561. Moreover, the fact that the handwriting of other parts of the text changes so often might indicate that Sir Richard, gradually turning blind, would then have relied on a number of different persons to write for him, on his dictation. It might also be possible, however, that Sir Richard's daughter or secretary had done the supervision, but was then no longer available for this task, so that Sir Richard had also to rely on other persons Inconclusive attempts to compare the handwriting of the 'supervisor' to samples of Sir Richard's handwriting.

Certified samples of Sir Richard Maitland's handwriting (although very short) are preserved in letters which he wrote to English commissioners for negotiations of peace in the borders, in MS London, BL, Addit. 33591 'Sir Ralph Sadley's correspondence and papers 1554-1585.

Fol. 80, from 1559, is not entirely from Sir Richard's hand, but bears his signature: written by a trembling hand.

Fol. 100, again from 1559, also bears his signature, trembling. Watermark: gauntlet or hand, large, long. Above the middle finger a stem and a blossom with five pronged petals (found in MS London, BL, Addit. 33591, fol. 100).

Characteristics of Sir Richard's handwriting in the two signatures: sharp angles in the letters m, n, and also in the lower angles of d, i, l, t and a. The top of letter t curves to the right, slightly, and it may even have a bow. These characteristics do not recur in the handwriting of the 'supervisor'. Yet, the samples are too short. Moreover, many persons have in their signature characteristics which differ from their usual handwriting.

The 'supervisor's' spelling in general.

The ch-sound: 'Dochtir' is always spelled out - never transformed to become 'daughter'.

Negation: mostly abridged as no.t, seldom spelled out, and then always as 'nocht' - whereas the text passages in other hands intermittently write 'nocht' or 'not'.

A similar observation is valid for other old Scottish forms of words which are usually abridged, but at times spelled out: consistently 'aucht', 'Edinbroucht', 'enouch', 'lauchfullie', 'mycht', 'nochtwithtstanding', 'rycht' etc., whereas the text from other hands intermittently contains spellings 'although', 'aught', 'enough', 'lawfully', 'might', 'right' etc.

The old letter thorn is replaced by 'th', whereas the other scribes replaced thorn by 'y' - e.g. ye, yat, yar, yarfra, yartrow - meaning the, that, their, therefrom, etc.

The old letter yoch is usually replaced by 'y', but for some words a replacement by 'z' is preferred: e.g. 'zeir', 'zung' = year, young.

The quh-sound is consistently maintained: e.g. 'quhilk', 'quhone', never spelled 'which', 'when'.

The forms 'beand', 'concernand', 'disponand' etc. were still alive and had not yet been replaced by the English forms 'being', 'concerning', 'disponing' etc. The 'supervisor' always writes 'wes', never 'was'. In other scribes' hands in this MS, however, the spelling 'was' happens to occur.

Fol. 111-119 blank

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Author(s):

• Richard Maitland of Lethington

No. of pages: Fol. 1r-110v (quires 1-5):