TEXTUS ROFFENSIS - PRE MAGNA CARTA ENGLISH LAW MANUSCRIPT - UNESCO's UK Memory of the World Register

I was going to link to the article in DailyMail Online about this, but for whatever reason it's not working.  

So, to reiterate, Rochester Cathedral is the second oldest in England (first called Saint Andrews and built about 604) and that is where the manuscript is kept. It is in old English. Called Textus Roffensis, it predates the 1215 Magna Carta and was a compilation of laws that go back before the Norman Conquest. Monks at the Saint Andrew's Priory at Rochester Cathedral likely created this illuminated manuscript. One of the reasons the monks may have created it is that at the time England was not unified and, for instance, there was a King who ruled Kent.  So, I see that if one were traveling from one Kingdom to another, one might want to know the various rules and regulations for each before hand.)

A little research on this cathedral and it is and has all along been a parish in which services are conducted. Because of its historical nature, there are also exhibits...

https://www.rochestercathedral.org/exhibitions

1400 years of prayer!

IS THAT HANDWRITING HIS? HANDWRITING ANALYISIS and GENEALOGY

Sometimes I find documents with the signature of the person being recorded - a draft registration for instance - and I really want to believe this is the handwriting of the individual.

Now you have to be really careful to assume this is true and resist the notion to get that handwriting analysis book out and get to know your ancestor through his or her penmanship! That is because I have seen a series of documents like these in which man after man seemed to have near identical signatures.

What gives?

Although your ancestor may indeed have known how to read and write (and comic book level reading is reading, this does not imply that they did either a whole lot) they may have carefully signed some documents while their daily handwriting was something else. Others remained at a very basic level in their ability to use penmanship rather than printing and it looks a little, shall we say, second-gradeish...

Wait until you have a collection of signatures that appear to match before you get too excited. Some documents you may consider besides draft registrations would be marriage licenses and original applications for Social Security.

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