Poser 359 - Synod of Lothians, 1589
This poser is from the minutes of the Synod of Lothians in 1589 (National Records of Scotland, CH2/252/1, page 16).
The synod, which refers to itself as the assembly (assemble, line 1), supervised the work of presbyteries, especially with regard to administrative matters in parishes. In this case it has ordered the minister at Ratho to assist with a neighbouring parish.
The extract contains examples of six types of abbreviation.
Firstly there is the common superscript letter to denote something missing in between in the word th[a]t in the middle of line 1 and w[i]t[h] in line 2.
There is an example of the superscript reverse sweep stroke to denote something missing after the t in minist[er] in line 1.
An ampersand is used in line 2 to denote the word and.
The con-contraction is used in the last word of line 2 and the superscript mark or tittle is used in this word as well to denote missing letters (usually missing vowels).
The last word in line 3 starts with an example of a p-prefix.
Question: What was the minister of Ratho ordered to do?
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