Distant Reader - subject-sheriffs-freebo

Introduction

This is a Distant Reader "study carrel", a set of structured data intended to help the student, researcher, or scholar use & understand a corpus.

This study carrel was created on 2021-05-25 by Eric Morgan <emorgan@nd.edu>. The carrel was created using the Distant Reader zip2carrel process, and the input was a Zip file locally cached with the name input-file.zip. Documents in the Zip file have been saved in a cache, and each of them have been transformed & saved as a set of plain text files. All of the analysis -- "reading" -- has been done against these plain text files. For example, a short narrative report has been created. This Web page is a more verbose version of that report.

All study carrels are self-contained -- no Internet connection is necessary to use them. Download this carrel for offline reading. The carrel is made up of many subdirectories and data files. The manifest describes each one in greater detail.

Size

There are 11 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 279,264 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 25,387 words long. If you dig deeper, then you might want to save yourself some time by reading a shorter item. On the other hand, if your desire is for more detail, then you might consider reading a longer item. The following charts illustrate the overall size of the carrel.

Readability

On a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 is very difficult and 100 is very easy, the documents have an average readability score of 85. Consequently, if you want to read something more simplistic, then consider a document with a higher score. If you want something more specialized, then consider something with a lower score. The following charts illustrate the overall readability of the carrel.

Word Frequencies

By merely counting & tabulating the frequency of individual words or phrases, you can begin to get an understanding of the carrel's "aboutness". Excluding "stop words", some of the more frequent words include:

shall, aforesaid, court, county, may, day, common, within, one, time, every, sheriff, writ, made, goods, lord, year, will, take, action, execution, office, make, according, must, yet, without, sheriffe, good, also, next, law, two, shal, ibid, lands, de, see, person, man, taken, case, return, first, sheriffs, justices, debt, thereof, statute, place

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are Bouleutērion, or A practical demonstration of county judicatures. Wherein is amply explained the judiciall and ministeriall authority of sheriffs. Together with the original, jurisdiction, and method of keeping all countrey courts. / By Will: Greenwood, philomath., A briefe summary of the lavves and statutes of England so far forth as the same do concerne the office of justices of the peace, sheriffs, bayliffs, constables, churchwardens, and other officers and ministers of the commonwealth : together with divers other matters not onely acceptable for their rarity, but also very necessary for their great use and profit, for all persons, but especially for such as bear office in this common-wealth / collected by Nicholas Collyn ..., and Curia comitatus rediviva. Or, The pratique part of the county-court revived fully demonstrating its antiquity and proceedings from the originall to execution, and all manner of actions lying in it. Also an easie and plaine method for the keeping of the court. Attachments and distresses at large explained, returnes of writs which do remove suites out of this court, into superiour courts, presidents of precepts; both originall and iudiciall, to which is added some select presidents of declarations and pleadings. With an exact table of all the particulars in the book. By W. Greenwood philomath..

The most frequent two-word phrases (bigrams) include:

county court, county aforesaid, lord protector, within named, within written, shall forfeit, next county, fieri facias, place within, early english, english books, action aforesaid, shal forfeit, shall enquire, scire facias, shall take, whosoever shall, books online, esq sheriff, common law, life time, common pleas, next court, next following, may take, within contained, party grieved, thereunto requested, quarter sessions, justices within, first part, creation partnership, text creation, lawfull men, great roll, every one, capias ad, page images, within mentioned, first day, forty shillings, shall make, two kine, false judgment, proper person, th day, firma de, fact saith, assumption aforesaid, good behaviour

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are Bouleutērion, or A practical demonstration of county judicatures. Wherein is amply explained the judiciall and ministeriall authority of sheriffs. Together with the original, jurisdiction, and method of keeping all countrey courts. / By Will: Greenwood, philomath. Curia comitatus rediviva. Or, The pratique part of the county-court revived fully demonstrating its antiquity and proceedings from the originall to execution, and all manner of actions lying in it. Also an easie and plaine method for the keeping of the court. Attachments and distresses at large explained, returnes of writs which do remove suites out of this court, into superiour courts, presidents of precepts; both originall and iudiciall, to which is added some select presidents of declarations and pleadings. With an exact table of all the particulars in the book. By W. Greenwood philomath., and To the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen of the City of London..

While often deemed superficial or sophomoric, rudimentary frequencies and their associated "word clouds" can be quite insightful:

Keywords

Sets of keywords -- statistically significant words -- can be enumerated by comparing the relative frequency of words with the number of times the words appear in an entire corpus. Some of the most statistically significant keywords in the carrel include:

tcp, county, statute, sheriff, london, law, king, court, city, writ, stat, sheriffs, sessions, safety, roll, rents, pound, plaintiff, pipe, peace, office, mayor, market, mannor, lord, laws, justices, iac, highnesse, hall, goale, firme, felony, execution, defendant, council, common, clergy, church, attorney, aldermen, action, act

And now word clouds really begin to shine:

Topic Modeling

Topic modeling is another popular approach to connoting the aboutness of a corpus. If the study carrel could be summed up in a single word, then that word might be said, and A short treatise touching sheriffs accompts written by the Honourable Sir Matthew Hale ... ; to which is added, A tryal of witches, at the assizes held at Bury St. Edmonds, for the county of Suffolk, on the 10th of March 1664, before the said Sir Matthew Hale, Kt. is most about that word.

If the study carrel could be summed up in three words ("topics") then those words and their significantly associated titles include:

If the study carrel could be summed up in five topics, and each topic were each denoted with three words, then those topics and their most significantly associated files would be:

Moreover, the totality of the study carrel's aboutness, can be visualized with the following pie chart:

Noun & Verbs

Through an analysis of your study carrel's parts-of-speech, you are able to answer question beyonds aboutness. For example, a list of the most frequent nouns helps you answer what questions; "What is discussed in this collection?":

day, time, a., goods, year, execution, action, person, man, part, debt, place, manner, return, case, persons, hath, viz, men, office, money, use, value, shal, party, death, name, l., reason, vertue, things, suit, doth, thing, damages, chattels, cap, s., lands, hands, ad, house, sheriffs, peace, shillings, years, life, body, order, times

An enumeration of the verbs helps you learn what actions take place in a text or what the things in the text do. Very frequently, the most common lemmatized verbs are "be", "have", and "do"; the more interesting verbs usually occur further down the list of frequencies:

said, be, is, have, was, aforesaid, are, were, made, do, did, take, being, make, according, had, taken, been, see, say, given, done, pay, appear, called, give, held, put, come, enquire, returned, brought, found, directed, having, written, named, delivered, charged, set, came, hath, forfeit, concerning, deliver, execute, bound, answer, cause, keep

Proper Nouns

An extraction of proper nouns helps you determine the names of people and places in your study carrel.

c., court, b., county, h., d., e., sheriff, p., r., common, s., lord, writ, 〉, w., i., f., 〈, sheriffe, law, g., hath, statute, y., a., council, m., mannor, l., city, justices, defendant, de, t., ◊, king, hall, office, fol, plaintiff, n., castle, aforesaid, lands, judgment, yo, sheriffs, mayor, london

An analysis of personal pronouns enables you to answer at least two questions: 1) "What, if any, is the overall gender of my study carrel?", and 2) "To what degree are the texts in my study carrel self-centered versus inclusive?"

his, he, it, him, their, they, them, you, i, my, your, me, our, himself, we, themselves, her, she, its, us, one, thy, ''em, thee, em, †, mine, ut, us''d, tanq, na, ay, ‖, yours, vvhat, traverseth, sel, ourselves, ours, iu, fa, andrews

Below are words cloud of your study carrel's proper & personal pronouns.

Adjectives & Verbs

Learning about a corpus's adjectives and adverbs helps you answer how questions: "How are things described and how are things done?" An analysis of adjectives and adverbs also points to a corpus's overall sentiment. "In general, is my study carrel positive or negative?"

same, such, other, aforesaid, good, next, common, first, great, sufficient, certain, more, present, whole, lawfull, own, true, many, ready, full, false, proper, last, new, several, second, due, like, high, much, open, honest, old, former, ancient, early, general, able, late, reasonable, large, guilty, english, particular, least, void, said, doth, himselfe, greater

not, then, so, there, also, thereof, therefore, now, here, as, well, out, yet, otherwise, up, thus, ibid, more, away, onely, very, together, afterwards, likewise, in, above, before, next, only, first, much, further, truly, whatsoever, forth, again, thereupon, therein, down, just, never, ever, unjustly, lawfully, often, sometimes, long, thereby, faithfully, fully

Next steps

There is much more to a study carrel than the things outlined above. Use this page's menubar to navigate and explore in more detail. There you will find additional features & functions including: ngrams, parts-of-speech, grammars, named entities, topic modeling, a simple search interface, etc.

Again, study carrels are self-contained. Download this carrel for offline viewing and use.

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