Elizabeth Elstob's Saxon Characters

Blessed ones!

Dr Monk has been busy creating a short video for Rochester Cathedral on my YouTube channel. I know, I'm a generous soul.

The video relates to eighteenth-century scholar Elizabeth Elstob (1683-1758) and her interaction with Textus Roffensis, arguably the most important collection of early medieval English laws in existence (in your twenty-first century, that is).

Elstob was a pioneering scholar of Old English (Anglo-Saxon) during the reign of Queen Anne (r. 1702-14), whom I once met. It's a long story, for another time.

Anyhow, as well as publishing editions and translations of major Old English texts, she is celebrated for writing the first Old English grammar to use modern English, rather than the expected Latin, thus making the study of Old English works far more accessible, particularly to other women of the time.

In the short video below, Dr Monk takes a look at the 'Saxon Characters' she left behind on one of the pages of Textus Roffensis, produced by a very industrious monk-scribe at Rochester's Cathedral Priory, around 1123. 

If you wish, and I can recommend it, you can also watch the video as part of a more detailed piece about Elstob on Rochester Cathedral's website, written by Lindsay Llewellyn-MacDuff, Bishop's Chaplain at the cathedral.

May you all be blessed!