It might be worthwhile to explore alternatives that still vaguely rank among 'historical fingerings' (as per surviving fingering examples); very often 1234-1234 or reversed without a literally passing thumb gives you better speed, and the occasional 1212 for the left hand can be useful as well (H. Ferguson doesn't pay much attention to these options in the book you mentioned); Left-handers would/should anyway be more open to mixing historical instructions for left-hand passages (1212) and right-hand passages (3434), and my thought is, on an ambidextrous instrument, why shouldn't everyone else, too, if it helps?

On the basis of the 1234-1234-idea it's actually possible to imagine other combinations of fingers, depending on the nature of the passage, like 123-123, 12-1234-34, or whatnot (always without working too hard to pass the thumb in a legato effort; instead, it's positions and proper accents we're primarily concerned about here). Historical fingerings seem in this sense to be much more shapeable; they can be made to follow and underline the musical texture, as opposed to modern fingering systems that tend to first establish a neutral technical ground upon which the player can build whichever musical texture he wants (and thus, failing stylistic or analytical insight, also introduce false accents and stupid articulations).

Then, about when the passing thumb entered the picture, nobody surely knows. If we imagine the passing thumb to have come up as part of some virtuoso's technique, this would mean that it was by nature individual, and as such likely not widely advertised (even Beethoven hated it when people listened to him practising and later imitated his technical tricks). And most importantly, before the passing of the thumb was standardised into the modern system, IF it existed at all in a certain environment it would have co-existed with all other kinds of fingering on the market, and it is thus, in retrospect (through a few rather tiny holes in the wall of history) almost impossible to spot. That is something else than to say it simply wasn't there.

fwiw Tilman 

On Thu, 28 Jan 2016 05:48:48 -0600, Jan de Groot <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

...
>Nevertheless, when playing very rapid passages, such as in Sweelinck's
>toccatas or, for example, Byrd's fantasia Nr. 13, I think that the very fast
>succession of, e.g., 23 or 34 was felt as inconvenient to the keyboard players in 
>those early times as it is for me. Could it be that in such (exceptional?)
>cases these players applied some kind of what we now call 'modern' fingering?

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Note:  opinions  expressed on HPSCHD-L are those of the  individual con-
tributors and not necessarily  those of the list owners  nor of the Uni-
versity of Iowa.  For a brief  summary of list  commands, send mail to
[log in to unmask]  saying  HELP .
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::