Bastard gothic scripts were
blackletter manuscript hands used in various parts of continental Europe, especially France, the Netherlands, and Germany, during the 14th and 15th centuries. They were primarily used to write vernacular narratives, business documents, and other informal matter.
Spanish bastarda was a modified form of
Italic script which remained in use until as late as the 1830s. The paleographer A. S. Osley characterized this bastarda as the "true successor" of the Italic hand, which had been supplanted by an early form of
copperplate script outside Spain. == Type ==