Hand: Main Hand, Bodleian Eng. hist. a.2, no. vii

Stokes, English Vernacular Script, ca 990–ca 1035, Vol. 2 (PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2006)

The boundary-clause was written in a fairly light script with a relatively round pen. Ascenders are proportionally long, are quite straight, and show small wedges which can be closer to forks. Descenders are short and straight, and minims have small wedges or approach-strokes and small feet. Both a and æ are round, and the back of a and the a-component of æ can reach below the bowl. Round c appears throughout, and d has a long, thick back rising at about 30–40° but with a turned-up tip. Horned e was used throughout, sometimes with a long tongue, and usually with a straight, upright back formed much like a minim. The tongue of f is long, flat, and lies on the base-line. The tail of g is wide, curved, and turned up at the tip but usually not close to being closed; this tip of the tail is usually well to left of the head, and the mid-section hangs from the middle or left of the top-stroke. The shoulders of h, m, n, and r are rounded but finish with a fairly straight, vertical stroke; the descender of r is also shorter than that of other letters. Low s was used only once in the boundary-clause; otherwise tall s is found which descends very slightly below the base-line and which has a very large head which can reach well over following letter. This is especially true in the s+t ligature, where the head of t reaches back to join s, and the hook of s reaches almost all the way over the t. The witness-list most often contains round s which rises slightly above cue-height and looks like a small capital; the one exception is in the name byrhsige (line 27), which has Caroline s and h but Insular r, g, and e. The conventional distinction between þ and ð was observed throughout. The structure of ð is the same as d but with a slightly longer back; the cross-stroke is concave down and extends from the right of the back without passing through it. Straight-limbed, dotted y appears throughout. Latin was written in Style-I Anglo-Caroline but with wedges and very occasional use of Insular letter-forms.See Bishop, English Caroline Minuscule, p. 15.