A peek at William Dyer's handwriting

 © Christy K Robinson William Dyer's 27 May 1660 letter to Massachusetts General Court
Image courtesy of Massachusetts Archives
Honored Sirs,It is no little grief of mind, and sadness of hart that I am necessitated to be so bould as to supplicate your Honored self with the Honorable Assembly of your General Court to extend your mercy & favor once again to me & my children. Little did I dream that ever I should have had occasion to petition you ina matter of this nature, but so it is that through the divine providence and your benignity my sonn obtained so much pitty & mercy att your hands as to enjoy the life of his mother. Now my supplication to your Honors is to begg affectionately, the life of my dear wife, 'tis true I have not seen her above this half yeare & therefore cannot tell how in the frame of her spiritt she was moved thus againe to runn so great a Hazard to herself, and perplexity to me & mine & all her friends and well wishers. So itt is from Shelter Island about by Pequid Narragansett & to the towne of Providence…
This is a fragment of a complete letter by William Dyer, dated 27 August 1660, written from Portsmouth, Rhode Island. It was an attempt to free his wife, Mary Barrett Dyer, from prison and her death sentence. But Mary had intentionally defied her death-penalty Massachusetts banishment order, and sailed from Shelter Island (northeastern end of Long Island) into the Narragansett Bay, perhaps gliding past her own home on the western shore of Rhode Island north of Newport. She kept going by water to Providence, and then, in a reversal of her and William’s first exile from Massachusetts in 1638, she walked to Boston.
She was arrested, imprisoned, tried, and sentenced to death, which was carried out on 1 June 1660.
A close inspection of the high-resolution image shows faded black ink on linen-textured paper that browned over the intervening 350 years. The left edge is stained by glue or book-binding. The right edge is understandably frayed and flaked. William’s handwriting here is consistent with other documents he wrote, with a fine-tipped quill and artistic flourishes. There are a few ink blots, particularly on loops, and the double t's (lett, quiett, att) are heavier than other letters, where he may have refreshed his quill.
The language, though tender when he refers to Mary, is otherwise courtly and professional (honored sirs, render you Love and Honor), as one would assume from a former clerk, secretary of state, and attorney general. He was no friend or colleague of Governor Endecott or Deputy Governor Bellingham, but he tried to appeal to their and the jury’s emotions about putting a beloved wife and mother to death, a woman who must be suffering from delusions.
What do you think William Dyer’s handwriting says about his personality or frame of mind? How does it compare with his wife’s handwriting?