Hi,
If you want the English sources the best place is Oz's site where he has collected transcripts of the available English sources.
http://www.mymartialheritage.org/manuals.htmlAs to Add Ms 39564, it's often refered to as Ledall, the author?, as it's less of a mouth full.
It probably dates between 1500 and 1550, with my money on the later date range. Looking at the text it's also likely that it's a copy of an earlier text, how much earlier is difficult to say. I see Ledall's MS as a window into a larger system, focusing more on how to control the fight and string attacks than trying to describe specific individual techniques, though there are a couple of specific techniques describe towards the end of he text. But again these are set within the context of a play rather than stand alone actions.
I also think it's very much a continuation of the same tradition as the Harleian MS, basically with less detail.
The Harleian MS dates to c.1440 and again s a transcript of an earlier document. The orginal being written by someone from the North East of England (Geordie) and the copiest being from Gloustershire, or vice versa. It goes into a lot more depth and alledgedly the attacks pair up with the counter attacks to create "paired drills". I've studied this one less so don't have that much of an opinion on the subject.
Then there's Sliver which I really don't understand, and I've never met someone who claims to understand it be able to explain it to anyone else without months worth of training. This is Oz's main bag and I don't think there's anyone out there who understands it better. But where Ledall and Harley are about swords that can be used with two hands Silver is more baksword.
Apart from Oz there are a few other people studying the English sources.
Ben Roberts of tThe Black Falcone, who focus's mainly on Harley with a bit of Ledall.
Terry Brown, who has done shed loads of work on ENglish Martial Arts as a whole, but isn't really a fan of the longsword, but has done a lot of very academic style research into the etymology of the MS.
Paul Wagner, who combines Ledall and Silver, which strikes me as reall odd, but each to their own.
And me, who looks at Ledall. I have a lot of ideas and am currently trying to put soething together to explain my thinking. Very little real MA experience, so I've a long way to go. Despite popular belief I've done a bit of etymology, and most of my theories actually work in practice.
I'm more than happy to discuss theories with pretty much anyone, because very few people are willing to say to much in public, due to "books in progress" etc. So any questions about Ledall feel free to ask.
All the best
Stevie T
