Will transcription help, please

[Pauline]

I am having trouble with a short section in the 1576 will of William Morse of Littledean, Gloucestershire, and wondered if anyone might be able to help, please. I'll add a clip of the extract below, but the full will is at Ancestry in the Gloucestershire wills set, and the direct link to the relevant page is: https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imagevie..._0002-00058?ssrc=&backlabel=Return&pId=146149

The problem section is the first of the two lines right at the very bottom of the page, and particularly the first bit up to the insertion of al[ia]s Morse - assuming it is Morse, the initial 'm' is not quite the same as the one in Morse at the start of the second line. (I can read the second line OK.) I'm not quite sure what the extract is about.

Thank you.

 

[Heather]

Hi Pauline, sorry I cannot help with your query, it is very difficult to read. I wanted to make sure that you know that this will covers 3 pages, hope that you can get some help with this.

 

[Pauline]

Thanks, Heather. Yes, I did know about the other two pages - from memory, I think page 2 was a list of debts and page 3 had the probate details.

That’s partly why I wasn’t sure what the bit at the bottom of page 1 was about. The handwriting is not quite the same as in the will itself, and abbreviated Latin is not the easiest.

The name after the few Latin words is also puzzling me - it might be “Tho”, then a surname, I presume, followed by the inserted al[ia]s Morse? The difficulty is that these two lines could hold a clue as to whether or not the testator is who I think he might be!

 

[Stuart]

Hi Pauline, sorry I cannot help with your query, it is very difficult to read. I wanted to make sure that you know that this will covers 3 pages, hope that you can get some help with this.

The problem I find is that it takes a lot of time to get up to speed with reading old writing like this. Even if you've done something similar, there's a sizeable re-learning curve. And Pauline is asking about the most difficult bit, too! So only someone with very recent experience of a similar hand will be able to help.

I wonder if it is a better idea to give the best reading you have, Pauline, with gaps in it, and with more than a couple of lines as "worked example". That would allow more people to contribute, including simply on the basis of "guess what a will might say".

 

[Pauline]

I wonder if it is a better idea to give the best reading you have, Pauline, with gaps in it, and with more than a couple of lines as "worked example". That would allow more people to contribute, including simply on the basis of "guess what a will might say".

Since this handwriting is not quite the same as that in the will, I'm not sure if quoting earlier bits will help, but this is what I have from these two lines, which is essentially in Latin:

"A dca vna m" with contractions and suspensions, so the second word could be dicta, but I'm not sure about the next one (or two). Then there is what might be "Tho" followed by "??nn" with a suspension, the first letter of which could be a 'T' and the second could be an 'a', and the suspension could represent 'er'. This is followed by what looks like "al[ia]s Morse" - I am pretty confident of the abbreviated alias, but not 100% sure of the 'm' at the start of the next word. After that we have "Johne? Morse de Deane parva yeoman", with the Johne probably being an abbreviated Johannes (John), and then Deane parva (Littledean) as the place..

In the body of the will, the 'r's are done very differently, so you can see 'Morsse' as the last but one word on the second line of the body of the will with the 'r' going down well below the line, the name "John Morsse" appears at the end of line 10, "George Morsse" two lines below that, and "my sone Thomas Morsse" at the start of line 13. The very last line, just before the witness signatures is "my laste will and testamente". But as I said, this writing is not the same as the two lines in question, so these examples may not help much.

 

[Pauline]

I see I omitted the word "et" (and) from my attempted transcription of the two lines in question. It should be there just after the insertion and before the Johne.

Also, since the letters 'u' and 'v' are often impossible to distinguish in old handwriting, I think the 'vna' (which appears not to have a contraction or suspension) is probably "una" (together) and the following 'm' with the suspension could perhaps be 'modo', one meaning of which is only.

I'm still somewhat in the dark about what the whole phrase is about, and I'm still not sure about the first of the two names. I was a bit bothered that what like 'Tho' didn't appear to be shown as abbreviated, but now I wondering if the backwards line from the top loop of the 'h' is a contraction mark, as well as, or instead of, being a line across the top of the first letter, which may or may not be a 'T'.

 

[peter]

If you're a member of the Society of Genealogists sign up for the free online Palaeography Club, the first meeting of which is at 6.30pm next Tuesday.

 

[Stuart]

Pauline, is that the grant of probate - or at least part of the probate process? In which case shouldn't there be a date in it somewhere? The only other suggestion that occurred to me was "una" for "vna", I'm afraid.

 

[Pauline]

Pauline, is that the grant of probate - or at least part of the probate process? In which case shouldn't there be a date in it somewhere? The only other suggestion that occurred to me was "una" for "vna", I'm afraid.

The probate is on the last page of the will - including the date. My best guess, bearing in mind the 'una', is that the two named in the extract had taken some action together relating to the will, but knowing exactly what may depend on the meaning of the 'dca' (with its contraction/suspension).

I have so far held back from saying that I am wondering if the first name mentioned in the extract may be 'Thomas Tanner alias Morse', since I may be reading into it what I would like it to say rather than what it actually says, and was hoping for an unbiased opinion.

 

[Pauline]

If you're a member of the Society of Genealogists sign up for the free online Palaeography Club, the first meeting of which is at 6.30pm next Tuesday.

Thanks, I’d seen that but it’s not a good time for me.

 

[Pauline]

On the subject of palaeography, TNA offer various free guides and tutorials to help with reading old documents - see
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/reading-old-documents/

There are also other online guides as well as books which can be useful for reference.

Also, one of the things I find helpful when tackling hard to read words is to decipher each letter individually. Normally when we read our brains make interpretations from the overall shape of words but this can easily mislead us when reading old documents.

 

[peter]

Also, one of the things I find helpful when tackling hard to read words is to decipher each letter individually. Normally when we read our brains make interpretations from the overall shape of words but this can easily mislead us when reading old documents.

This was one of the tips on the SoG palaeography course I took.

 

[Pauline]

This was one of the tips on the SoG palaeography course I took.

It’s a good tip, but inevitably there are sometimes going to be words or phrases which nevertheless stump us - handwriting in the past, as now, is not perfect. So we will come across badly formed letters, smudges or holes which obscure something crucial and highly inventive spellings.

Here, I’m still unsure about the abbreviated Latin, but I’ve come to the conclusion the first of the names is most likely to be Thomas Tanner alias Morse, despite the handwriting leaving open that element of doubt. He crops up in a fair few 16th century documents in that area, and seems to be something of a favourite to act as an overseer in wills.

 

[peter]

It’s a good tip, but inevitably there are sometimes going to be words or phrases which nevertheless stump us - handwriting in the past, as now, is not perfect. So we will come across badly formed letters, smudges or holes which obscure something crucial and highly inventive spellings.

Yes, that was something else I learned from the course - like registrars and vicars, scribes could be careless.

 

[Pauline]

This was posted on another forum for me, and the conclusion there was that the Latin bit before the two names was:
“A d[i ]c[t]a una cu[m]” meaning “By the said* together with”.

*”the said” is feminine so presumably relates to the executrix (who was the testator’s wife)