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This is the second in a series of short articles about old hand-written parchment documents that can be found now and again at flea markets, country auctions and so forth.
Calligraphers are historians to some extent are they not? While there is admiration and technical interest in the marvelous manuscripts of centuries ago, calligraphers are also learning of the social conditions of those times, why the manuscript was written and who was involved. If one is able to find parchment documents that were written as commercial or legal documents, and even if none of the parties named is famous, there can be much in that document to have the historian in us awakened.
Legal documents (indentures) are like a chronicle. The parties involved are named, their profession or occupation is given, as well as their place of residence. Recitals then follow i.e. a "list" of reasons for the document's purpose. Any property involved is well described. If one can remain unimpressed by legal long-winded verbiage, then with a little imagination or through research, one can visualize not only the parties involved and their circumstances, but also the poor scrivener that tediously wrote each and every copy of the document.
To lesson the chance of fraudulent documents, the scrivener would start writing the indenture about half-way down and then turn the skin around 180 degrees and write the same text on the other half. .A serrated or indented cut was made between the two texts to produce two separate copies that could be matched together. Thus these documents became known as indentures
