Agricultural History Review, Volume 58 Part 1 (2010), p. 132

These two volumes are the latest in the renewed series of calendars which was begun several years ago under the direction of Professor Christine Carpenter of the University of Cambridge with funding from the AHRC. Having spent several years using the original calendars as part of a project which collected data from the IPMs and then continued to use the original series frequently for research, it has been very interesting to explore these newer calendars which cover the period some one hundred years later than my usual area of study.

The editors of these volumes have delivered greatly improved levels of detail and information – far better than the old series. All of the additional material is of the type which will be of great help to scholars and to local historians alike. As well as the improved level of detail from the documents themselves, the excellent introductions will help anyone unfamiliar with the source to find their way around its intricacies and eccentricities. The clearly delineated rules for using the calendars are extremely helpful and eliminate the guesswork which was sometimes involved in using the older versions. The tables of references are also set out in a clear and helpful way and the addition of notes as part of these tables is very welcome. The inclusion of footnotes for certain marginalia is also very useful as are the notes about the translation of certain words within the marginalia itself. The tables of escheators too are helpful for those people interested in the administrative structure that lies behind this source.

The additional material provided in the new series of calendars will be of great use to a wide range of readers. The inclusion of jurors’ names is particularly important. This provides easier access for scholars to analyse this greatly under-studied group; they will no doubt also be welcomed by local and regional historians. The jurors’ index which includes the county in which the name occurs is particularly helpful. Indeed the division of the indices into jury names, personal names, and place-names is an excellent tool.

Within the entries themselves the inclusion of the extents in the new series of calendars is very welcome. While it is a commonplace to say that the valuations in the later IPMs are poor reflections of reality, it is nevertheless important to have these extents in the printed volume so that the maximum use can be made of the information that they contain. The greatly increased amount of detail from the inquisitions that these calendars contain is their most impressive and important feature; for while the introduction warns that these calendars are not ‘an edition’ of the source they do (again in the words of the introduction) ‘present in as concise a manner as possible the information provided’. This richness of this material is evident on every page. Small estates such as those of Robert Warner are described; his Surrey manor of Poyle, which included only 26 acres of land but two watermills and two fulling mills, is in contrast to his other manor of Hampton Poyles in Oxfordshire, with its 400 acres of arable land and 20 acres of meadow. Great estates such as that of Henry Beauchamp, Duke of Warwick are also included, although the type of information is rather different with a great deal of space being devoted to the disputed inheritance of parts of the estate. The personal situation of the deceased often leaps off the pages of the calendar; William Haroudon, ‘gravely troubled by his illness’ was driven to enfeoff his lands to members of the local clergy in order ‘to expel the king and other lords by collusion from the wardship of the premises’ during the minority of his heir.

These volumes are a welcome addition to the new series of calendars and a considerable improvement on the old. They are a pleasure to use. One further improvement would make the new volumes and the old calendars of even greater use to historians (especially those who live some distance from a good library). If it were possible to make the indices to the series machine-readable and searchable, then many hours of searching through the numerous volumes could be saved. Not within the scope of the current project, but perhaps something for the future?