Textual Conventions

Summary

The original spelling and punctuation have been retained, except where the latter obscures the sense of a passage, standard abbreviations of English and Latin words have been extended, and capitalization modernized. Typographical omissions have been supplied, and placed within square brackets.

Collations:

Some sets of articles are numbered consecutively though they contain several sections, grouped under different headings. In collating these sets, references are made simply to numbers of individual articles. Other sets, however, are divided into a series of separately-numbered sections. These latter sections are here given numbers, printed in bold type both in the text and in the collations. Numbers of individual articles are printed in Roman type: when two sets are collated, the derivative has the numbers of its articles placed in brackets, while the original does not. In a few cases, the derivative has a different sequence of sections from the original, to which attention is drawn in the footnotes, and in these cases those sectional numbers in the derivative varying from the original are also placed in brackets. In most cases, the original and derivative share the same sequence of sections, the numbers of which are printed without brackets.

In collating sets, individual articles are placed in one of four categories: Identical, Modification, Omission and Addition. Each needs some explanation.

Identical: This category includes not just the exact reproduction in the derivative of an individual article from the original, but also an article in the derivative which contains very minor variations in construction or phraseology, which make no difference to the sense or purpose of the original article. For example, in his enquiries for London diocese in 1612, based on a set for London diocese in 1605, Bishop John King added ‘touching the premisses’ to the end of article 4 in Section 1, which, nevertheless, is entered in the collation in Volume I as ‘identical’. To count every tiny change, however trivial, is neither useful nor economical. Articles in this category are listed by section and number.