tgarnsl

In the course of research on the British Army of the eighteenth century I was able to obtain two very exciting documents: the 1722 and 1749 British Army Articles of War. I won't quote the titles here because they are very verbose, but from what I can tell the contents is much the same, concerning penalties for various crimes, which range from those you'd expect, such as mutiny, to those you wouldn't expect, such as insulting the Royal Family (to which I, a fairly committed anti-monarchist, am both horrified and amused). What is especially striking, however, is the typeface: the 1722 version is printed in blackletter, while the 1749 version is printed in Roman type. My knowledge of printing history isn't strong, but I find this change interesting, and wonder at it.

Should anyone wish for either of these PDFs, please send me a message. They aren't available freely online, but I am fortunate that my alma mater contains some of the best collections in the world, so I was able to gain access. I would like to make them more freely available online at some point, but that would require me to work out how in the first place.