How's your Latin? - Help with Latin translation required

[Fife49er]

Here's my take on your text. Untranslated text remains in non-bold type.

27th June 1551. On this day Master Robert Danyelstone rector [in] Dysart said and set forth that Master George Strauchauchin (Strachan?) stipendiary minister of the said parochial church contrary to the statutes of the Synod and contrary to the holder of the same by action of pleading between the same Master Robert and Master George super residentia of the same Master George and by the administration of his offices among the parishioners dicti proche abcessit nulla ab neither the same master Robert nor the parishioners wanted or received permission and which substitute a certain Master John Whyte chaplain in the care and administration of his offices what in fact substituted by no means whatever another said Master rector will neither commit or admit at any time: by what means it was witnessed by the action against the said George and by the remedy of law two o'clock in the afternoon at Douglas's place of residence pro his testibus dno wt et rot car by various others.

Bits I'm still thinking about:-

super residentia = the above residence?

proche - not a clue. It doesn't google at all...

abcessit = he walked out/off. Doesn't seem to fit

nulla = no, as in "No woman, no cry"

will neither commit or admit - not 100% sure of the tense in this bit. I'm fairly confident it is future tense, which would fit with the "at any time" phrase, but it could just possibly be past tense, in which case it should read "neither committed nor admitted"

pro his testibus dno wt et rot car - no idea. It could start off "For these witnesses..", but the rest of this is, I think, abbreviations. dno might indicate "Master", et = and, but the rest is obscure.

I'm not saying the above is all that good - if anything, it points up the dangers inherent in word by word translation where Latin word order and English word order are different. However, I hope it will be of some use to you.

[LesleyB]

Hi all

pro his testibus dno wt et rot car - no idea. It could start off "For these witnesses..", but the rest of this is, I think, abbreviations. dno might indicate "Master", et = and, but the rest is obscure.

I think there might be some abbreviations in there e.g.
dno - could this be domine/us/um whatever? - along the lines of witnesses in the eyes of God... "in nomine domine" etc
wt - I reckon may be an abbreviation for witnesses
Rot is often an abbreviation for Robert - Robert Carr?

Best wishes
Lesley

[Langtonian]

Fife49er and LesleyB,

Great work, many thanks indeed. My particular interest in this passage is the John Whyte referred to, he may just be a member of my extended family tree.

I have my Whyte/White families in the parish of Dysart fairly well researched back to about 1600 but the John Whyte in this para is living in the parish some 50 years earlier. I t would be nice to establish some link between the families.

Regards,

George

[Fife49er]

Just had a thought

In the main body of the text, dnr/dno etc is equivalent to our current day "Mr" - back then, an adult male would have been referred to as "Master", so that's the appropriate rendering. In the line that starts "in his testibus", it COULD be short for "Messrs" (referring to several witness signatories). Only problem I have with that is that "his" and "testibus" are dative or ablative plural in form, whereas "dno", or "domino" to give it the full length, is dative or ablative singular, so grammatically the two don't agree.