There Are 14 Paleographical Features Listed By Mooney

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There are 14 paleographical features listed by Mooney as characteristic of this scribe, although Fletcher conflates the two final ones giving him a total of 13. The first comprises three variant forms of upper-case A, only one of which is properly found in Trinity 244. There is, however, another form in Trinity 244 which Fletcher claims 'very occasionally... approaches, although is not quite fully commensurate with' Mooney's third type of A (p. 603). The second type of A is entirely unrepresented. To compensate for this Fletcher adds another form of ED Hardy Boots uppercase A which he says is rare in Ellesmere and not noted by Mooney, and which may be compared with a 'similarly rare near equivalent' found in Trinity 244, although comparison of the two graphs presented as figures 4(a) and 4(b) reveals marked differences between the form in Trinity 244 and that in Ellesmere. The fact that it is rare in Ellesmere and not found in Hengwrt suggests that it is not a useful criterion for identification of this scribe.

The second feature is a tendency to capitalise ...
... initial letters of some nouns, a tendency which Fletcher concedes is not as pronounced in Trinity 244 as it is in Hengwrt or Ellesmere. The third feature, the decorative dilated form of D, is not found in Trinity 244: 'It never appears in the florid calligraphic guise that it is capable of assuming, especially in Ellesmere'. There is a much less distinctive form which Fletcher considers to be an 'embryonic form, the essential morphology of which relates closely to that of this D in other credited Pynkhurst copy'. But this form is not that referred to by Mooney and it is not at all clear that this much less idiosyncratic form should be considered to be distinctive to this scribe. Mooney's fourth feature, round or reverse e, is found alongside the usual form of e in Trinity 244 as it is in other Pynkhurst manuscripts.

Trinity 244 also has the fifth feature, the anglicana two-compartment g with a projecting spike on the right of the lower lobe. The sixth feature is a form of upper-case N with a thin vertical stroke usually carrying a bead; sometimes the bead is found without the stroke. Trinity 244 has a version with the bead and without the vertical stroke. The seventh feature, an unusually large 8-shaped s, is present in Trinity 244, though it is perhaps not as pronounced as it is in Pynkhurst's manuscripts. But more problematic for the identification being offered by Fletcher is the scribe's frequent use of the secretary kidney-shaped s, a form that is extremely rare ED Hardy Hoodies across Pynkhurst's manuscripts, and which never appears in Hengwrt or Ellesmere. According to Fletcher this form is common only at the beginning of Trinity 244, while the 8-shaped form begins to appear from 9v onwards,' competing strenuously' with the kidney-shaped form and in some folios superseding it entirely. This explanation is contradicted by the two specimens provided by Fletcher in his article, neither of which contains a single instance of the 8-shapeds.

The first specimen, folio 3, contains 40 instances of kidney-shaped s and one instance of sigma, while the second, folio 63, has the opposite ratio: 29 instances of sigma s and just one occurrence of the kidney-shaped form. So while these specimens do indeed support the argument for a shift in preferences, they do not support an argument for the prominence of the 8-shaped form characteristic of Pynkhurst.