subject-executionsAndExecutioners-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 2021-05-24 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 25 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 158,667 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 6,346 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.

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histogram of sizes
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box plot of sizes

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 88. 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.

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histogram of readability
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box plot of readability

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:

god, will, one, may, lord, text, time, now, shall, great, tcp, christ, many, mr, king, made, yet, much, day, english, make, last, man, good, house, death, early, england, come, life, things, others, first, people, take, also, men, sin, sins, eebo, without, way, never, two, parliament, might, fits, put, came, place

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are Warnings to the unclean in a discourse from Rev. XXI. 8. Preacht at Springfield lecture, August 25th. 1698. At the execution of Sarah Smith. By Mr. John Williams pastor of the Church at Deerfield., A brief review of the most material Parliamentary proceedings of this present Parliament, and their armies, in their civil and martial affairs. Which Parliament began the third of November, 1640. And the remarkable transactions are continued untill the Act of Oblivion, February 24. 1652. Published as a breviary, leading all along successiviely, as they fell out in their severall years: so that if any man will be informed of any remarkable passage, he may turne to the year, and so see in some measure, in what moneth thereof it was accomplished. And for information of such as are altogether ignorant of the rise and progresse of these times, which things are brought to passe, that former ages have not heard of, and after ages will admire. A work worthy to be kept in record, and communicated to posterity., and A Brief account of the behaviour, &c..

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

english books, early english, books online, jesus christ, page images, early works, creation partnership, text creation, god will, lord jesus, represented either, characters represented, image sets, tcp schema, asking permission, tcp assigned, text transcribed, commercial purposes, xml conversion, providing financial, bit group, creative commons, work described, proquest page, online text, encoded text, image set, markup reviewed, images scanned, institutions providing, tiff page, iv tiff, without asking, financial support, batch review, pfs batch, encoded edition, mona logarbo, pray god, textual changes, will never, god almighty, christ jesus, last speech, every one, gap elements, almighty god, defects per, christian shaw, margaret laing

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are The last speech of Sir Godfrey McCullough of Myretoun, knight and baronet, who was beheaded at the cross of Edinburgh, the twenty sixth day of March, 1697. The last speech of Thomas Thwing priest; executed at York for high-trenson [sic], on Saturday the 23. of October 1680., and The true narrative of the proceedings at the Assizes holden at Kingstone-upon-Thames, for the county of Surry Which began on Monday the 7th of this instant March, and ended on Thursday the 10th following. Giving an account of the most remarkable trials there, viz. for murder, felonies and burglaries, &c. with a particular relation to their names, and the places of their committing their facts, with the number of those condemned to die, burn''d in the hand, transported, and to be whipt. But more particular of the trial and condemnation of Margaret Osgood of the parish of St. Olives Southwark, for the horrid murther of her husband, on the 21th of July last, for which horrid fact she was found guilty of treason and murther..

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

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unigrams
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bigrams

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, lord, god, early, king, soul, life, house, england, army, witnesses, witches, witch, wilde, wicker, uncleanness, thy, thomas, tei, table, spirit, sir, sins, sinners, sin, scots, scaffold, richard, prisoners, persons, parliament, night, nation, munday, mr., montrosse, minister, merchant, master, margaret, london, kingdome, jewels, iesus, holland, hannam, hainam, glory, girl, gentleman

And now word clouds really begin to shine:

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keywords

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 god, and The true narrative of the proceedings at the Assizes holden at Kingstone-upon-Thames, for the county of Surry Which began on Monday the 7th of this instant March, and ended on Thursday the 10th following. Giving an account of the most remarkable trials there, viz. for murder, felonies and burglaries, &c. with a particular relation to their names, and the places of their committing their facts, with the number of those condemned to die, burn''d in the hand, transported, and to be whipt. But more particular of the trial and condemnation of Margaret Osgood of the parish of St. Olives Southwark, for the horrid murther of her husband, on the 21th of July last, for which horrid fact she was found guilty of treason and murther. 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:

  1. god - A brief review of the most material Parliamentary proceedings of this present Parliament, and their armies, in their civil and martial affairs. Which Parliament began the third of November, 1640. And the remarkable transactions are continued untill the Act of Oblivion, February 24. 1652. Published as a breviary, leading all along successiviely, as they fell out in their severall years: so that if any man will be informed of any remarkable passage, he may turne to the year, and so see in some measure, in what moneth thereof it was accomplished. And for information of such as are altogether ignorant of the rise and progresse of these times, which things are brought to passe, that former ages have not heard of, and after ages will admire. A work worthy to be kept in record, and communicated to posterity.
  2. did - Sadducimus debellatus: or, a true narrative of the sorceries and witchcrafts exercis''d by the devil and his instruments upon Mrs. Christian Shaw, daughter of Mr. John Shaw, of Bargarran in the County of Renfrew in the West of Scotland, from Aug. 1696 to Apr. 1697. Containing the journal of her sufferings, as it was exhibited and prov''d by the voluntary confession of some of the witches, and other unexceptionable evidence, before the Commissioners appointed by the Privy Council of Scotland to enquire into the same. Collected from the records. Together with reflexions upon witchcraft in general, and the learned arguments of the lawyers, on both sides, at the trial of seven of those witches who were condemned: and some passages which happened at their execution.
  3. text - The true narrative of the proceedings at the Assizes holden at Kingstone-upon-Thames, for the county of Surry Which began on Monday the 7th of this instant March, and ended on Thursday the 10th following. Giving an account of the most remarkable trials there, viz. for murder, felonies and burglaries, &c. with a particular relation to their names, and the places of their committing their facts, with the number of those condemned to die, burn''d in the hand, transported, and to be whipt. But more particular of the trial and condemnation of Margaret Osgood of the parish of St. Olives Southwark, for the horrid murther of her husband, on the 21th of July last, for which horrid fact she was found guilty of treason and murther.

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:

  1. did, time, having - Sadducimus debellatus: or, a true narrative of the sorceries and witchcrafts exercis''d by the devil and his instruments upon Mrs. Christian Shaw, daughter of Mr. John Shaw, of Bargarran in the County of Renfrew in the West of Scotland, from Aug. 1696 to Apr. 1697. Containing the journal of her sufferings, as it was exhibited and prov''d by the voluntary confession of some of the witches, and other unexceptionable evidence, before the Commissioners appointed by the Privy Council of Scotland to enquire into the same. Collected from the records. Together with reflexions upon witchcraft in general, and the learned arguments of the lawyers, on both sides, at the trial of seven of those witches who were condemned: and some passages which happened at their execution.
  2. god, lord, said - A brief review of the most material Parliamentary proceedings of this present Parliament, and their armies, in their civil and martial affairs. Which Parliament began the third of November, 1640. And the remarkable transactions are continued untill the Act of Oblivion, February 24. 1652. Published as a breviary, leading all along successiviely, as they fell out in their severall years: so that if any man will be informed of any remarkable passage, he may turne to the year, and so see in some measure, in what moneth thereof it was accomplished. And for information of such as are altogether ignorant of the rise and progresse of these times, which things are brought to passe, that former ages have not heard of, and after ages will admire. A work worthy to be kept in record, and communicated to posterity.
  3. god, sin, sins - Warnings to the unclean in a discourse from Rev. XXI. 8. Preacht at Springfield lecture, August 25th. 1698. At the execution of Sarah Smith. By Mr. John Williams pastor of the Church at Deerfield.
  4. tcp, text, eebo - A full and true account of the tryal, condemnation, and execution with the last dying words of Augustin King Who was executed neer Hartford-Townsend, on Wednesday March the 21st. 1687/8.
  5. text, early, scaffold - The manner of the beheading of Duke Hambleton, the Earle of Holland, and the Lord Capell, in the pallace yard at Westminster, on Friday the 9th of March 1648 with the substance of their several speeches upon the scaffold, immediately before they were beheaded.

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

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topic model

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?":

time, text, day, things, death, others, man, way, people, sins, life, self, thing, sin, place, works, words, body, work, men, texts, end, blood, mercy, heart, books, manner, images, soul, xml, persons, part, person, hath, hand, characters, house, execution, nothing, page, hands, fits, name, image, times, power, head, ▪, account, none

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:

was, be, is, have, had, were, are, being, been, said, do, did, made, having, make, am, come, take, put, came, say, brought, know, found, give, see, done, encoded, let, taken, went, told, heard, according, desire, pray, sent, set, thought, think, has, fell, speak, go, desired, bring, hope, saw, given, carried

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nouns
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verbs

Proper Nouns

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

god, lord, christ, tcp, mr., king, england, parliament, thou, hath, house, jesus, hainam, father, c., sir, english, devil, text, london, m., 〉, ◊, eebo, ., ●, gentleman, tei, john, spirit, 〈, scaffold, oxford, fits, damsel, col, court, law, heaven, army, minister, executioner, proquest, phase, partnership, margaret, creation, church, world, sheriff

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?"

i, he, his, her, it, my, you, she, him, they, their, them, me, your, we, our, thy, us, himself, themselves, thee, its, ''em, mine, yours, one, theirs, ours, em, ye, herself, ''s, us''d, severall, itself, hers, e''re

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

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proper nouns
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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?"

other, such, great, many, same, own, last, good, several, early, much, true, more, little, first, present, english, most, guilty, poor, available, common, particular, former, whole, full, ready, greater, general, few, least, small, late, next, textual, better, able, long, high, short, second, pleased, free, right, best, like, sudden, new, clear, illegible

not, so, then, now, very, up, out, also, never, more, away, most, as, therefore, here, only, down, again, well, thus, there, much, ever, off, truly, yet, in, even, sometimes, about, n''t, long, over, too, early, thereof, first, together, online, particularly, on, far, before, further, accordingly, still, just, forth, likewise, therein

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adjectives
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adverbs

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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