Legal Definitions - court hand

Court hand refers to a distinctive style of handwriting historically used by clerks in English courts. This script was characterized by its extensive use of abbreviations and contractions, following specific rules to ensure documents were concise and consistent. The primary goal of court hand was to save time and space on parchment, making record-keeping more efficient for legal professionals of the era. However, its complex nature and specialized abbreviations made court records largely incomprehensible to the general public, leading to its eventual prohibition in the early 18th century in favor of more accessible English.

• Imagine a historian examining a 17th-century English land deed. The document describes the transfer of a parcel of land from "Thos. Smth." to "Wm. Jnsn." for "£X" and details its boundaries using terms like "prcl. of grnd." and "adj. to est." The historian struggles to decipher these entries without specialized knowledge, as the script is dense and full of unfamiliar symbols and shortened words. This difficulty arises because the deed was written in court hand, a script designed for brevity by legal clerks, not for easy public comprehension.

• A genealogist researching an ancestor's legal dispute from the late 1600s uncovers a court judgment. The document, detailing the verdict and sentencing, uses phrases such as "deft. fnd. gilty of asslt." and "ord. to pay dam. to pltf." The genealogist, while understanding the general context, finds it challenging to read the exact details of the ruling due to the numerous abbreviations and the highly stylized, compressed lettering. This illustrates court hand, where clerks condensed legal proceedings into a specialized script to maintain uniformity and conserve space on official records.

• Consider a researcher attempting to transcribe an old English will from the 1680s. The will specifies bequests like "to my dghtr. Mary, the sum of ten pnds." and "my hse. and lnd. to my eldest son, Jno." The handwriting is intricate, and many words are truncated or represented by symbols that are not standard English. The researcher realizes that the document was likely penned by a legal clerk using court hand, a system of writing that prioritized conciseness through abbreviations and a specific script style, making it efficient for legal professionals but difficult for modern readers without training in historical paleography.