Scripts                     

There are four main scripts, or hands, used in English documents between 1500 and 1800. These four hands are just general terms that cover innumerable variations and combinations. The four hands are:

• Court - in use from the late middle ages to early 1700s
• Secretary - in use from 1400s to mid-1800s (though mostly obsolete by 1750)
• Italic - in use from the 1500s to early 1800s century
• Round Hand - in use since the early 1800s

Examples of the 4 Main Scripts

Court Hand

Court Hand is shorthand for a variety of hands that developed in the different legal courts of medieval England. Its angular look, letters formed mostly from single strokes, distinguishes it from the more connected scripts that followed it. This website does not offer much instruction specifically in Court Hand, but instead highlights places where Court Hand continued to influence how letters were written long after Court Hand, strictly speaking, was in wide use. Even the influence of Court Hand had disappeared by the mid-1700s.

From "Early Modern Handwriting: An Introduction by Elisabeth Leedham-Green at English Handwriting 1500-1700.

As should be clear from the above description, documents can often contain elements of two or three different scripts. Using the alphabet charts will help you identify the different elements of the various hands.

Secretary Hand

Secretary Hand was used from the late middle ages until the early eighteenth century. While Round Hand and Italic Hand are largely comprehensible to current readers, Secretary Hand, at first glance, appears archaic and almost like it isn't English at all. This website concentrates on Secretary Hand, as it is the one which dominates early modern (1500-1800) manuscripts, yet is unfamiliar to most readers.