It is very rare to find mistakes or erasures in the lettering of old charters. Varieties of spelling occur everywhere; a name is often found spelt two or three different ways on the same page; but this is easily explained if the work was written from dictation, especially if pronounced to or by a foreigner. Our English language being so full of unexpected variations of spelling, it is no wonder that names of people and places suffered at the hands of a transcriber unacquainted with the localities, and who merely wrote down the words as they sounded to him. The actual spelling of words remained fairly constant. Certainly to us they look very curious, for English orthography has undergone innumerable changes; in course of time new words are being coined, and old words alter not only in spelling, but also in meaning and significance. If we wish for an example of Old English phraseology, we have our present version of the Bible--which, being translated into English in the seventeenth century, now sounds quaint, and in many parts the sense of the words is a matter of dispute. If it be compared with the Revised Version the changes which have taken place in our language in the two past centuries become very evident. All this must be borne in mind when the task of transcribing and translating old writing is undertaken, and allowance must be made for all such alterations both in style and spelling. It has been said that a knowledge of Latin is indispensable to the would-be transcriber of old deeds; this is not really the case for ordinary antiquarian research, for the meaning can be discovered easily with only very slight knowledge. Legal Latin consists so entirely of set forms that when once these forms are familiar to the reader, they are without any difficulty recognised, and are so little liable to any variations that they are easily rendered into English. The most important points being a correct and accurate attention to the names of people and places, with the descriptions of the localities referred to. As the use of Latin for legal transactions almost entirely superseded the Norman-French language after the reign of Edward III. (although it is an open question whether deeds were not duplicated into the two languages), very few old deeds are met with in the latter language, and those few are usually so well written and legible that they can easily be understood with the help of a slight knowledge of modern French.