chancery hand

plural chancery hands · alternative Chancery hand

1. historicalartsEither of two styles of handwriting: a written form of black letter used in France and England from about 1350, developed in the Lateran chancelry in the 13th century, or a style of cursive handwriting introduced in the 1420s by Niccolò de' Niccoli, developed from humanist minuscule; a variety of either of these styles.

   Her name, from Crawford's example of it, seems to me to be written in the same chancery hand, which renders the supposed forgery a mere copy, mistaken by Welwood for the original.

   1830, John Pinkerton, The Literary Correspondence of John Pinkerton, Esq., volume 2, page 112

   2 more examples

   It begins like a transcript, at the top of the page, without the least appearance or form of an intended original : it is written in the common secretary hand of ,the age, which Crawford mistook for a chancery hand;[…].

   1819, Malcolm Laing, The History of Scotland, volume 1, page 373

   But, unlike his posterity, Hercolani did not carry this sort of pleasantry too far, and his book remains a splendid specimen of the late chancery hand distinguished by decorative treatment of the ascenders and descenders and a discreet flourishing of initial and terminal letters.

   2009, Stanley Morison, Selected Essays on the History of Letter-forms in Manuscript and Print, page 165