The ART of WRITING and READING Historical Text with an Untrained Eye.

Before Doctors could print out prescriptions from the computer they were renowned for their illegible writing, so the Pharmacist would phone for clarity.
Clergy-men had a similar issue in recording the administrations of the parish, some had beautiful script and others, like this Preacher of Saint Giles without Cripplegate (outside the London Wall).
Like the Pharmacist regular reading helps one to decipher the odd run of words and get the general gist of it all.
Any geneologist/historian wants correct translation for the facts of people and the places where they live.

As I am creating an historical novel from these documents - a legacy to future generations, I would appreciate any help in deciphering!
                       I want to find out what it was like growing up for my great grandparents x 12 generations ago.

The Royal Couple - King Charles 1 & Queen Henrietta Marie

Always tension with Parliament over Money!!!

I have written out the parts I think I've deciphered - can you help? Please.

It is 2nd ........1631. This day approval of John Clark of Parish of St Giles - (click the photo and magnify). Aged about 28......to marry Margaret Lloyd of St Giles in East Cripplegate.....
.

Saint Giles without Cripplegate Parish Church
Register of  Marriage
Bonds and Allegations. 1631 (via www.ancestry.com.au)

I've always been "nosey" - as a kid I'd walk by the terraced houses of Selly Oak in Birmingham(before it catered for University students, then on tip-toes get a glance of people's front rooms if they hadn't put up net curtains. Nosey as...

Now on the other side of the world I have a sense that peering into the private lives of my Clark ancestors in virtual London, I might get caught!  I can't resist knowing and finding out what we have in common all this way down the 350 years!

Thanks to the democracy of technology and knowledge sharing in this 21st century it is marvellous to discover internet technology and their revolutionary printing press enabled and emboldened the proliferation of news and opinion, art and balladry to a wider audience as our blogging does today.

The Gospel According to Church,
State and those who can read.

King James 1
A new translation of the  Bible 1611
for the Established Church of England.

The Tower Hamlets folk who survived in the the English multi-cultural city of London around the wharfs and warehouses, taverns and coffee-houses, and the power bases of  Royalty and Parliament, the words and The Word would have been absorbed into their skin.

I told my mother I was researching her history from her mother born CLARKE.  It didn't take long before I was in Cockey, whoops! Cockney East London.
I was from the second city of England and London was far away. My Nan hadn't even been to the Capital of London in all her life. She'd rather go to Broadstairs!

Travel and broadening the mind and life experience has been a modern advent for the labouring classes with basic writing and reading not achieved across my family tree until the Edwardian age (1910)

I was stirred to write a novel when reaching the parish register of St. Botolph without Algate in July 1655, which presented me with a not so anonymous Grandparent, with an extraordinary narrative:

St. Botolph without Aldgate Parish Register 

My first layperson translation being:  Transcription of text in document

17 July 1655. 'William Clark, son of John Clark, a soldier and Thomasine his wife who herself went for a souldier and was billeted at the Three Hammers in East Smithfield about seven months and after was delivered of this child, the 16th day of this July, and was baptized the 17th in her lodging, being one Mr.Hubber's house. She had been a souldier by her own confession about five years and was sometime drummer to the company.'

Laurence Price was a prolific writer of ballads and known Parliamentarian, so perhaps he had access to interview John and Thomasine Clark in "The Famous Woman Drummer" .

FROM THE ROXBURGH COLLECTION AT English Broadside Archive:
www.ebba.english.uscb.edu

Being NOSEY, I had to find out some background on the love of her life, John Clark who triggered her compulsive desire to participate in the bloody murderous savagery of civil war, to find that for a mere grand-daughter of Eve she could do anything.

 By pretending to be a man she was a liberated woman!

One of the first professional soldiers in a national New Model Army, Thomasine Clark is a lesson in the capabilities of some women to be on the front-line(if they wish). She and many of the women of this period show the gender battles instigated by patriarchs were being challenged way before the conscious memory of our mothers and great-grandmothers like the Suffragettes and Feminist activists.

It is highly probable the Cripplegate parish register above is recording John Clark's parents, my 12 generation grand-parents.
The next step is to decipher the bad writing of the Preacher and explore the Post-Reformation contest of ideas and interpretations of the period by this post-modern descendent.

OLIVER CROMWELL WAS A KEEN DIDACTIC MILITARY MAN AND RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALIST OF THE INDEPENDENT CHURCH. THIS IS WHAT JOHN AND THOMASINE WOULD HAVE BEEN GIVEN WITH A BIBLE (even though they would not have been taught to read and write.