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The Fifteenth-Century Inquisitions post mortem: Realizing the Potential

Michael Hicks writes:

Completion of the Mapping the Medieval Countryside Project

Michael Hicks writes:

IHR Late Medieval Seminar

Matthew Holford and Matt Tompkins will be talking about the project at the Late Medieval Seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, Friday 7 November, 5.30pm.

Meeting of the Mapping the Medieval Countryside Advisory Board

The fourth meeting of the board was held at the University of Winchester on Monday 8th September 2014. Members received reports on progress so far. All 24 volumes of the calendars for 1236-1447 and 1485-1509 will be posted shortly on British History Online. Work on the interactive interface for 1399-1447 has been proceeding slowly – all parties underestimated the manual labour of semantic markup and the scale of the complex programming required – but progress has been speeded by use of some of the overheads for automation and to buy in extra researcher time. There was a demonstration of volumes 23 principally of person and places and this aspect of the project will be completed by the end date of 31 December. The board heard about the ongoing Richard III IPM project. They also looked forward optimistically to the next project (in hopeful anticipation that the Indian Summer of English Feudalism receives AHRC funding) and the next phase of the IPM project, funded or not. Of the current board, Prof. Bruce Campbell, Prof. Nick Mayhew, Paul Spence and Dr Mark Allen are standing down, whilst Dr Rebecca Oakes, Jason Sadler (both present), Stephen Mileson and Andrew Spencer will join the board.

The Second Inquisition post mortem conference

The Second Inquisition post mortem conference took place at the University of Winchester on Sunday 7th and Monday 8th September 2014. It was a small event of 22 delegates, all active in the field. The thirteen papers exploited new-found understanding and explored the potential of the source for all kinds of study. Four papers arose from project and the rest from other researchers in the field. Three papers by Christopher Dyer, Stephen Mileson and Matthew Tompkins looked at the economy and landscape; another three by William Deller, Katie Clarke, and Michael Hicks were based on the proofs of age. Matthew Holford added to our understanding of dower, Janette Garrett supplied a Northumberland case study, Gordon McKelvie considered IPMs in Scotland and Calais, and Jackson Armstrong dealt with naming practices on the Cumbrian borders. Simon Payling's paper was a wide-ranging critique of the biases obtained by fifteenth-century heirs. Finally Paul Spence of the partner institution King's College London located the project within the digital humanities and demonstrated how the interactive interface will work.