Emma [Cope] Thoyts,  The Key to the Family Deed Chest : How to Decipher and Study Old Documents: Being a Guide to the Reading of Ancient Manuscripts.  London: Elliott Stock, 1893, chapters I (1, "Hints to Beginners,"1-13), IV (4, "Old Deeds," 41-51), V (5, "Law Technicalities," 52-69),  the one-page chart of Arabic numerals on page 79, IX (9, "Old Letters," 132-7), and XII (12, "Abbreviations, etc.," 138-43). 

1)  What kinds of professional writers or scribes wrote manuscripts that we might encounter today?  For what sorts of people did they write them?

2)  As printers began supplying more and more whole books between 1455 and the 1550s, to what kinds of other copying tasks did scribes turn to feed themselves and their families?

3)  Which kinds of things should one try to describe first when learning to read a C16-17 legal document?  Thoyts gives good, sympathetic advice to the frustrated first-time paleographer (student of old writing) confronted with a script that, at first, will not yield its meaning. 

4)  How many "hands" of what kinds did most C16-17 writers have, and for what were they used?

5) (Arnie's Trick Question): What two famous canonical authors you know well wrote the last stories or novellas to have scribes as their protagonists?