Viewing posts for the category Featured inquisition
The escheator: a short introduction
Posted by: mholford in Featured inquisition 10 years, 12 months ago
Entail in Tail Male: The Earldom of Salisbury 1337-1428
Posted by: mholford in Featured inquisition 11 years ago
Michael Hicks explores the complicated history of the earldom of Salisbury as revealed in CIPM xxiii.262-85.
Inheritance and Partition: The Break-up of the Holland Earldom of Kent
Posted by: mholford in Featured inquisition 11 years ago
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.
CIPM xxiii.538: markets and fairs in the IPMs
Posted by: mholford in Economy and society, Featured inquisition 11 years, 2 months ago
Among much else the Lincolnshire IPM of Thomas de Roos, knight, taken in 1430, recorded the existence at Wragby of a weekly market on Wednesdays, and an annual fair on the feast of the Ascension. Both had also been recorded in 1421. [1. CIPM xxi.845, xxiii.548.] The Wednesday market is known from other sources and is listed in a comprehensive Gazetteer of markets and fairs. [2. http://www.history.ac.uk/cmh/gaz/gazweb2.html; print version, S. Letters et al., Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs in England and Wales to 1516, List and Index Society Special Series 32-33 (2003). Information on fairs and markets is drawn from the online text unless otherwise noted.] The fair is not listed, although its existence is confirmed by an account of 1423-4. [3. SC 6/1121/16 m. 17.] This is not unusual: the IPMs are a significant source of information on markets and fairs, and they are particularly valuable for the fifteenth century when the history of many such institutions is obscure. IPMs can shed light on the decline and disappearance of markets, and consequently on economic contraction and changing patterns of trade. As is often the case, though, the inquisitions need to be used with caution: detailed study of markets and fairs in the IPMs tells us not only about those institutions but about the value and reliability of the inquisitions themselves.
Up and Down the Family Tree, or, Medieval Heir Hunters
Posted by: mholford in Featured inquisition, genealogy and family history 11 years, 3 months ago
Michael Hicks explores the rules of inheritance applied to some distant heirs.