Morten St George Theory

[Morten St. George]

It's a long-ess Morten (or long-eff if the stem has been damaged by that scrapey area on the parchment).

The letter ell was never written like that. It never extended below the baseline and was not written with a straight hook across the top (unless there was also a loop).

Long-ess was the normal way to write ess for most of the 14th and 15th centuries and part of the 16th century.

Here is a long-ess and long-eff on the top right (long-eff is marked) and ell on the bottom right in handwriting that is in a similar style (Gothic) to the 116v text:

It's appears from everything you've written about the text that you do not know how to read medieval writing.

Look at the three ell letters in the first and second lines. Note that they do not go below the baseline. Note that they have angled loops. They look nothing like the long-ess or long-eff in gas/gaf but they do look typical for the 15th century.

The first thing to understand is that someone writing circa 1600, even when trying to imitate 15th-century handwriting, would have been familiar with more possibilities than someone writing circa 1420.

To continue:



I forgot to mention in my last post that we find an isolated "o" just after "mich", that is, that's where we pick up the "o" of gallo.

It looks to me that the continuous downstroke does end at the base line, whereupon it veers off to the right, making it possible that the part below the baseline is nothing more than a mistake, ie. a failure to raise the quill while moving it away from the parchment. Do you see any of your long-ess's straying off to the right?

On the downstroke, note the difference between that el  and the ess  seen here:



Also note the curved top whereas your alleged s at the end of gas  has a top at right angle to the shaft, as seen here with the els in the Spanish hallar (silent h):



Moreover, I'll point out that during the Renaissance, the long-ess was usually used at the beginning or in the middle of words, being replaced with an "s" or a "z" at the end of words. The author of the marginalia, not to give away his 1600 date, uses an 8  for a ess  at word end, as seen here:



How do you wish to explain his use of a long-ess, and not a 8, at the end of your alleged gas?

Sorry, JP. Overall, you do not have a convincing argument.