• AHRC funded research project for online publication and dissemination of the medieval English inquisitions post mortem,

• Jan. 2011- Dec. 2014• Department of History, University of Winchester, and

Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London

• Inquisitions post mortem (IPMs): nature, publication history and historical value

• Online publication: our project• Rationale• Approach• Findings

Inquisitions post mortem

The ‘feudal pyramid’

Inquisitions post mortem• Sworn enquiries into the lands held at their deaths by direct

tenants of the crown (tenants-in-chief)• Survive from about 1236 to 1660 (when feudal tenures were

abolished) in more-or-less continuous series at the National Archives

• Usually created by escheator• Designed to record and enforce royal feudal rights, especially• Wardship, when a tenant died and their heir was not of full legal

age • Primer seisin and relief, when an heir was of full age

• Related documents: • Proofs of age• Assignments of dower

Inquisitions post mortem• Most contain information on:• What lands and tenements the tenant held• The nature of the tenant’s legal interest or estate• Of whom the lands were held and by what feudal services• What they were worth

• Sometimes a single valuation, sometimes a detailed itemization or extent

• When the tenant died (systematically recorded only from 1342 onwards); the identity of their heir; and the heir’s age

• Names of the jurors who were present• Many also describe• Grants of land made by or to the tenant

Publication history• Calendars (CIPMs), i.e. translation-cum-summary• Four stages:

1. 1898 to 1955, covering period 1485 – 1509 (Henry VII)2. 1904 to 1988, covering period 1236 – 1399 (Henry III – Richard II)3. 1987 to 2002, covering period 1399 – 1422 (Henry IV and V)4. 2003 to 2010, covering period 1422 – 1447 (Henry VI, part)

• 1447-85 and 1509 onwards still unpublished (except for some local history society publications)

• Various omissions in stages 1-3 and changes of editorial policy over 1-4

Extents and valuations

Jurors Modernized dates, places

1236-1399 No No No

1399-1422 Yes No Yes

1422-1447 Yes Yes Yes

1485-1509 Valuations but not extents

No No

Historical value:very varied

Historical value: core elements• Descent of manors and property: county histories from 16th

cent. to Victoria County History; • Landed society (aristocracy and gentry): estates; wealth;

marriages and marriage settlements; attitudes to inheritance and family; changes and social mobility

• Economic and agrarian history: size and composition of estates; relative importance of arable/meadow/rents etc./ regional variation and changes over time; landscape and settlement history

• Demography: life-expectancy; seasonality of mortality; fertility and replacement rates

• Government: changing nature and enforcement of royal rights; interaction of central and local systems; manipulation of the system; role of the jurors

Historical value: reliability

• ‘extremely unreliable’• ‘notoriously unreliable’• ‘too unreliable to be of any value’

• Reasons for these judgements?

Historical value: reliability

• ‘the single best source for reconstructing both the institutional and economic geography of the country’• ‘the single greatest available compendium of information

on the unit value of land’• ‘no other contemporary source is as informative’ [on

common rights]• ‘the single most useful source for analysing the scale,

nature, and value of seigneorial milling’

• Reasons for these judgements?

Historical value: reliability

• Impossible to take a black-and-white approach• Mapping and statistical analysis can reveal a great deal about the

limitations and idiosyncrasies of the IPMs

• Barns in Hampshire

• Customary acres

• Mapping and statistical analysis at a large enough scale may also be able to compensate for some of these limitations and idiosyncrasies

Mapping the Medieval Countryside

• Grew out of the most recent bout of publication, 2003-10• Original objective to continue calendaring 1447 onwards• Calendaring in print form unsatisfactory:• Audience: academic or wider local/family history, genealogy?• Access

• Expense of the more recent volumes• Scarcity of the older volumes• Need for a full series to answer many research questions

• Analysis• Rich information but often very laborious to extract from printed

calendars• Limitations of the indexes: persons, places, and subjects

• An initial solution: digitization• Not the original documents: condition, size etc.• Volumes 1-20 (1236-1399) and 2nd series 1-3 (1485-1509)• Rekeyed and mounted on the project website and British History

Online essentially as plain text• Volumes 1-2 available• Limited functionality, not always easy to search for persons /

places due to variant spellings• A long-term solution: full electronic calendaring• Volumes 18-26 (1399-1447), i.e. those containing valuations and

extents• Fully indexed using TEI XML markup• Rich functionality• A model: England on the Eve of the Black Death

• Database of manorial extents 1300-49• Statistical analysis• GIS mapping• Pioneered large-scale

analysis of IPMs as key evidence for economic and agrarian change

New light on the precisionand reliability of IPMs

New light on the value of seigniorial resources

New light on the distribution of landscapefeatures and seigneurial resources

New light on theabsolute valueof land items

New light on therelative valueof land items

Our project…• By 1399 the material is not as rich (decline of demesne

farming), but a similar approach is feasible• c. 7000 documents, c.15000 holdings, c. 2500 manorial

extents 1399-1447• Capture agrarian information from all IPMs, not just manorial

extents• Capture other information as well• Tenants’ estates in land• Grants and enfeoffments: spread of entail and use• Tenures and services• Dates of death and heirs• Administrative information (dates, types of writ, jurors –

enhancement of volumes 18-21 for 1399-1422)

• Agrarian changes (e.g. the shift from arable to pasture)• Demography, inheritance, succession • The ‘feudal system’ • Local and central government

Findings…?• Data entry, analysis, and development of interface ongoing• What follows is subject to revision – intended to illustrate the

possibilities of the resource

Estates in land

Estates in land, 1432-7 (by number of holdings, all holdings)

Estates in land, 1432-7 (manors only)

Agrarian historyFrequencydistribution:value of meadow per acre, d., 1427-32

n=148mean=14.4

Frequency distribution:acreages of meadow,1427-32

Mean: 16

Frequency distribution:value of manor courts, 1427-32, in pence

n=52mean=113.7 (0.47£)

Demography

Mortality of tenants in chief, numbers/year, 1418-1446

Demography• Possible explanations:• Actual variations in mortality for various reasons (disease, famine,

war, etc.)• Variations in the efficiency of the IPM process (possible that more

tenants-in-chief were identified at some times due e.g. to ‘fiscal feudalism’)

• Outbreaks of plague/disease known from chronicles etc. 1420, 1427, 1433-4, 1438-9

Deaths/month, 1420

‘Shown to the jurors’: evidence for literacy?

References to documents “shown/presented (etc.) to the jurors”, CIPM vols. 1-21 and 2nd ser. 1-3, by volume

• Possible explanations: • Changing practice at inquisitions (more documents were being

shown to jurors, which may imply more jurors being able to read / understand them)

• Changing documentary conventions (documents had been shown to jurors before, but this practice was not commonly noted in the IPMs before 1400 or after 1485. Such a change might still have implications for jurors’ literacy)

• Changing calendaring practices (the IPMs do in fact refer to documents being shown to the jurors, but the editors of some calendars did not consider this important enough to include)

@MedievalIPM

www.inquisitionspostmortem.ac.uk