The Transcription

As faithfully as we have been able to do, we have put in modern script our reading of the manuscript. We have not modernized spelling or punctuation, and we have not attempted to clean up the prose of the burned areas so that it "reads" fluently. We have transcribed only the entries and not the marginal notes: a list of keywords like "bered" (to mark a burial) which help to organize the entries on the manuscript page. We have also not included later pencil marks on the citations added to mark corresponding passages in Strype.

Several characters and abbreviation conventions of Machyn's sixteenth-century secretary hand warrant comment.

• Machyn uses two abbreviations for prefixes beginning with p. Word beginning with pro are abbreviated with a p in which the second semi-circular penstroke extends clockwise through the descender:
  
  
  Words beginning with par, per, or pur are abbreviated with a p with a horizontal slash through the descender:
  
  
  These are both rendered in the transcription as p. They will not be found by the search engine as p and should be searched for with an initial asterisk (thus, *sun for psun).
• Macrons abbreviate n's and m's in the text. Thus, men appears in the manuscript this way:
  
  
  It is transcribed as mē. The macrons do not interfere with the search function.
• Abbreviations of Sir and Master appear this way:
  
  
  
  
  They are rendered in the transcription as S and M.
• Final -er is often abbreviated in the text, as in the following:
  
  
  Words containing final -er are presented in the transcription with concluding dashes as aft-.
• Final genitive and plural endings -es, -is and occasionally -us are all abbreviated in the text with the same character:
  
  
  We have marked these in the transcription with {s}, so that they will be found by the search engine. We have not attempted to reconstruct the entire abbreviation (since that would entail guessing the vowel that Machyn would have used), but this {s} should be understood to mark -es, -is or -us and not simply -s.
• Machyn uses a long s for word-final -s which generally looks like this:
  
  
  and this appears in the transcript as ſ. This character is recognized by the search engine as 's', so typing the word kyngs on the search page will pull up all instances of kyngſ and kyng{s}.
• Double l's in the text are barred, and appear this way:
  
  
  These are rendered in the transcript as ll. These will not be recognized by the search engine as l's, however, so a word like Aprill can be found by searching for Apri*.
• Some text has been crossed-out or otherwise obstructed. We have presented these passages (if they are decipherable), with strike-through marks. Strike-throughs are not recognized by the search engine.
• Searches will not search for phrases around line breaks, because line tags interfere with the search.