following a comment on my last post, which featured a plaque from Holt Church, I am posting some useful links for those who are wondering why a lot of 17-18th century inscriptions and earlier manuscripts have the different forms of the s – known as the long s “ſ” and short s “s”.

click to enlarge

The best information I found online is this:
from the TYPEFOUNDRY blog pages

there’s nothing I can add to this, it’s very thorough and has further links within it.