Can't decipher the first letter, 1642 document

[tamarakel]

I am having a hard time deciphering the first letter, I believe the name is Sutton, but I can't find a match for the first capital letter..

[horselydown86]

It's a peculiar one.  I've read hundreds of C17th documents & can't recall seeing another like it.

My view is that it can only be S or H - unless one takes the long curling line as pure adornment, in which case I/J becomes plausible.

Unfortunately either of S or H is a good match to -utton.

I suppose you have already looked for the same letter in another word in your document.

[SiGr]

How about ‘D’ as in ‘Dutton’ ?

[horselydown86]

How about ‘D’ as in ‘Dutton’ ?

In my view it doesn't have anything of the general form of a D of the era.

See:  https://www.english.cam.ac.uk/ceres/ehoc/alphabets/majuscules/D.html

[sugarbakers]

Does this help ?


Palaeography - Hilary Marshall

p35 Individual 'S'

Transcript [9] - Sirs (1593)

Transcript [9] - Seales (1593)

[horselydown86]

Thanks sb.  Those are excellent exemplars of S from the era.  As you can see, the curves are considerably more complex than the main curved element of tamarakel's example.

I'm leaning more towards it being an H.  Put your thumb over the left half of the curved element and you have an H.

[Bookbox]

I tend to see this as S.

I think sugarbakers' examples shown above are not that far from tamarakel's sample. In particular, the two short vertical strokes in the middle are very typical of a capital S. I’ve never seen such strokes on a capital H, and I can’t find any, but I’m very willing to be shown some.

Tamarakel, it would be very useful if there was a known capital H in this document, for comparison?

[horselydown86]

I was thinking of the parallel strokes plus the top and bottom wiggles together as constituting the vertical part of an H.

However, if one considers the top wiggle as an extension of the main curved element at its top and the bottom wiggle similarly for its bottom, then it looks more like an S.

[SiGr]

Hi, tamarakel,
Can you provide some more info on the document - maybe a wider photo ?
Regards,
Simon