A Formula Book of English Official Historical Documents

This 1909 work forms a second supplement to Hall’s Studies in English Official Historical Documents. It gives examples of a wide range of English ministerial and judicial documents from the ninth to the seventeenth centuries. These are arranged according to type and purpose, the majority in Latin. The intention is to assist the user of such archival materials, by familiarising them with the format and language used in each kind of document, and explaining why and how they were written. The 80 transcriptions were made by palaeography students at the London School of Economics, and classified and edited with extensive notes by Mr Hall. They are not literal transcriptions, as contractions have been expanded, and the punctuation and capitalisation modernised. To save space standard formulas have not been repeated each time. Despite the lack of any illustrations of originals, the book filled a need long felt by students of history.