Viewing posts from April, 2013

The escheator: a short introduction

 

Wara terre: an obscure Staffordshire landholding unit in Margaret de Bromley's Assignment of Dower, 1420

The 1420 assignment of dower to Margaret, widow of Thomas de Bromley, esquire, has been calendared in CIPM xxi, as document 173, but with a number of gaps.  The head and foot of the original inquisition are damaged and parts of the rest were too faded to read.  However the faded sections can mostly be made out with effort, especially with the aid of an ultra-violet lamp, and they have been added to the updated calendar text below, which is now complete save for the introduction and a part of the final section lost from the original. Additionally, a mistranslation of the name of an uncommon landholding unit, the wara terre, has been corrected.

Entail in Tail Male: The Earldom of Salisbury 1337-1428

Michael Hicks explores the complicated history of the earldom of Salisbury as revealed in CIPM xxiii.262-85.

Unpublished IPMs: Proof of Age for Sibyl, wife of Thomas Bekyngham, esquire, 1418

This document is the proof of age of Sibyl, wife of Thomas Bekyngham, esquire, of Berkshire. It appears in CIPM xxi as document 146, but the evidence of nine of the twelve jurors is omitted there, and that of the other three is truncated: the full text is given here. It is of particular interest because the memory of seven of the jurors is stated to derive from the dates of written documents created on the day of the baptism, one of them a record of the baptism entered in the parish missal book.

Inheritance and Partition: The Break-up of the Holland Earldom of Kent

Michael Hicks discusses CIPM xix.622-38, the IPMs for Edmund Holland earl of Kent and a case study in the division of an inheritance among co-heirs.