Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- Glossary
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Crossing Generations: Dower, Jointure and Courtesy
- 3 The Lesser Landowners and the Inquisitions Post Mortem
- 4 Tales of Idiots, Signifying Something: Evidence of Process in the Inquisitions Post Mortem
- 5 The Value of Fifteenth-Century Inquisitions Post Mortem for Economic and Social History
- 6 ‘Notoriously Unreliable’: The Valuations and Extents
- 7 The Descriptions of Land Found in the Inquisitions Post Mortem and Feet of Fines: A Case Study of Berkshire
- 8 Re-assessing Josiah Russell's Measurements of Late Medieval Mortality using the Inquisitions Post Mortem
- 9 A Great Historical Enterprise: The Public Record Office and the Making of the Calendars of Inquisitions Post Mortem
- 10 Writs and the Inquisitions Post Mortem: How the Crown Managed the System
- 11 ‘Thrifty Men of the Country’? The Jurors and Their Role
- 12 Place-Names and Calendaring Practices
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- Glossary
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Crossing Generations: Dower, Jointure and Courtesy
- 3 The Lesser Landowners and the Inquisitions Post Mortem
- 4 Tales of Idiots, Signifying Something: Evidence of Process in the Inquisitions Post Mortem
- 5 The Value of Fifteenth-Century Inquisitions Post Mortem for Economic and Social History
- 6 ‘Notoriously Unreliable’: The Valuations and Extents
- 7 The Descriptions of Land Found in the Inquisitions Post Mortem and Feet of Fines: A Case Study of Berkshire
- 8 Re-assessing Josiah Russell's Measurements of Late Medieval Mortality using the Inquisitions Post Mortem
- 9 A Great Historical Enterprise: The Public Record Office and the Making of the Calendars of Inquisitions Post Mortem
- 10 Writs and the Inquisitions Post Mortem: How the Crown Managed the System
- 11 ‘Thrifty Men of the Country’? The Jurors and Their Role
- 12 Place-Names and Calendaring Practices
- Index
Summary
This book celebrates the publication of the early fifteenth-century inquisitions post mortem (IPMs) and seeks to ensure their exploitation as widely and profitably as possible. It sets the agenda for the much fuller exploitation of a key source for many aspects of the late medieval English economy and society and sets out the rewards of more sustained study of the IPMs. Of all twenty-nine volumes of calendars (CIPMs), it is volumes xxii–xxvi that are the most comprehensive and those best attuned to the interests of twenty-first-century users. The Arts and Humanities Research Board (now Council), the National Archives, the University of Cambridge, Professor Christine Carpenter as editor, and Drs Matthew Holford, Claire Noble, Kate Parkin, and Stephen Mileson deserve the grateful thanks both of specialists on fifteenth-century history and of that much wider community of researchers (often recreational) who can now fully exploit this wonderful material. This Companion needs to reach that host of local historians and genealogists for whom IPMs are a crucial but often unrecognised resource. Calendaring of the IPMs has stopped, one hopes temporarily, with the inquisitions post mortem for 1447–85 uncalendared. In the meantime, Professor Michael Hicks is leading the AHRC-funded project to digitise the twenty-nine volumes and make them freely accessible – volumes i and ii are already on British History Online – and to convert volumes xviii–xxvi into a fully interactive web-mounted resource that will permit analysis which is currently extremely difficult and laborious.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Fifteenth-Century Inquisitions 'Post Mortem'A Companion, pp. xi - xiiPublisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012