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Reading old handwriting is called palaeography. There are two sorts of problems:

1. In the past, some letters were written differently to the way they are now, so are extremely unfamiliar.

Examples of the different styles of letters are given to the below.

Be aware, too, that writers often abbreviated words using apostrophes, or sometimes apostrophes followed by the last letter or two – and sometimes the apostrophes were just missed out. ‘William’ was often written ‘Will’m’ or Wm, James as ‘Jas’, ‘Majesty’ as Maty’ and so on.

Two excellent guides to old scripts are H. E. P. Grieve’s Examples of English Handwriting 1150–1750 (Essex Record Office, 1949) and L. Mumby’s Reading Tudor and Stuart Handwriting (Phillimore for BALH, 1988).

2. Bad handwriting. However, like cracking codes, you can often work out what an incomprehensible letter is by studying its companions. For example, if you can read ‘Ed-ard’ then you can surmise the other letter is a ‘w’ – but look for the letter elsewhere to make sure you have it right: never go with an unsupported guess.

You can also see how letters are written in phrases or words where you know what the letters should be. Many wills, for example, start ‘In the name of God Amen’, so you can see how the scribe wrote his ‘I’s, ‘n’s, ‘t’s and so on before tackling the will itself.

Don’t be daunted by age. Sometimes a 16thcentury document can be so beautifully written as to be easier to read than some modern scribble.