Sensational Sources

What does it say?

Reading history

You can visit the National Archives in Kew and have a look at original historical documents from the time of the Civil War (or you can look at some on this website). However, a lot of the documents are hard to read. They are hundreds of years old and the writing has faded. Plus the way people wrote then was a bit different to now. They had different ways of expressing ideas and they had different ways of spelling words too.

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Help

We’ve given you some help to get to grips with these sources.

You can listen to the words being read out.
You can read the words in a transcript. These are exactly the same words as in the original document but typed out so they are easier to read.
You can read the simplified transcript, which has the same meaning as the original document but uses simpler and more modern English words.

Firstly though, why not try and read some of the original document itself before you click on the help features?

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What does this document say?

SP16.415.47; criminal requests to join the army, 1639

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