TRANSCRIPTIONS OF SELECTED EXCERPTS

Following are transcriptions of selected texts excerpted from the 1695-1696 Somerset Judicials. These were chosen because they seemed to be historically significant or illustrative of life in Somerset in those times. Some minor typographical adjustments have been made, such as replacement of  “y^e” with “the”, correction of obvious spelling errors, rectification of upper and lower case letters, and a few insertions of periods and commas in places where they would be used today. This is done somewhat selectively where, in the transcriber’s  judgment, the clear intent of the text would otherwise seem to suffer. Persons requiring an exact transcript should consult the original document. In cases where the text was obliterated or could not be deciphered the uncertain parts are denoted by dashes in parentheses,  ( --- ). There will no doubt be some unintentional errors and we apologize for those.

The date in square brackets indicates when the text was entered into the Judicial record. In some cases this was just a transcription from a separate document of earlier date, entered as a legal record, as will usually be apparent.