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Lancashire Assizes (1202-1285)
All the surviving records of the assizes held by the royal justices in eyre (itinerant) in Lancashire during this period were extracted by colonel John Parker and published by the Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society from 1904. The justices not only tried all civil actions outstanding on their advent, pleas of the crown and common pleas, but also interrogated the juries of each wapentake and borough as to the Capitula Itineries, the Articles of the Eyre, inquiring into the king's proprietary rights, escheats, wardships, and questions of maladministration. Only a dozen complete rolls survive for this period; but Appendix I (pp. 218-253) gathers together from the Patent Rolls of the reign of Henry III (1216-1272) a schedule of Lancashire assizes for which justices were assigned; and Appendix II (306-342) adds the fines and amercements before the justices during that reign, as recorded on the Pipe Rolls.
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Lancashire Assizes
 (1202-1285)
Lancashire Feet of Fines (1196-1307)
Pedes Finium - law suits, or pretended suits, putting on record the ownership of land in Lancashire. These abstracts were prepared by William Farrer for the Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society and published in 1899, under the title 'Final Concords of the County of Lancaster, from the Original Chirographs, or Feet of Fines, preserved amongst the Palatinate of Lancaster Records in the Public Record Office'. They cover the period from the 7th year of king Richard I to the end of the reign of king Edward I, with a couple of fragmentary survivors from earlier (1187 and 1194).
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Lancashire Feet of Fines
 (1196-1307)
Inhabitants of Leicester (1103-1327)
The Corporation of Leicester commissioned the publication (in 1899) of extracts from the earliest borough archives, edited by Mary Bateson. This volume brings together several important sources: the borough charters; the merchant gild rolls (from 1196 onwards); tax returns; court rolls (from about 1260 onwards); mayoral accounts, &c. All the Latin and French texts are accompanied by English translations. Membership of the merchant gild was by right of inheritance (s. p. = sede patris, in his father's seat), or by payment of a fee called a 'bull' (taurus). The sample scan shows part of a gild entrance roll; those marked * paid their bull, and were thus, by implication, not natives, or at least not belonging to gild merchant families. By 1400 membership of the gild merchant had become the equivalent of gaining freedom of the borough (being a free burgess): but at this period the two were not necessarily the same, and some of the merchant gild members were not resident in the borough, merely traded there. Not all the tax rolls surviving for this period are printed: but full lists of names are given for a loan for redemption of pontage and gavelpence of 1252-3 (pp. 44-46); five tallages of 1269 to 1271 brought together in a single table (128-145); and tallages of 1286 (208-211), 1307 (255-257), 1311 (272-274) and 1318 (310-313). The portmanmoot (or portmote) was the borough court dealing with minor infractions and civil suits. Finally, there is a calendar of charters (from c.1232 onwards, 381-400), and a list of mayors, bailiffs (reeves), receivers and serjeants (401-407).
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Inhabitants of Leicester
 (1103-1327)
Inhabitants of Yorkshire: Claro wapentake (1379)
The poll tax returns for this wapentake, the area around Aldborough, Boroughbridge, Knaresborough and Wetherby.
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Inhabitants of Yorkshire: Claro wapentake
 (1379)
Lancashire Feet of Fines (1377-1509)
Pedes Finium - law suits, or pretended suits, putting on record the ownership of land in Lancashire. These abstracts were prepared by William Farrer for the Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society and published in 1905, under the title 'Final Concords of the County of Lancaster, from the Original Chirographs, or Feet of Fines, preserved amongst the Palatinate of Lancaster Records in the Public Record Office'. They cover the period from John duke of Lancaster to the end of the reign of king Henry VII. In addition, there are abstracts of fines paid for various Lancashire writs from 1377 to 1509, and a fine of 1195 that had been discovered during the preparation of the volume.
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Lancashire Feet of Fines
 (1377-1509)
Lichfield Diocese Ordinations: Acolytes Secular (1511)
The diocese of Coventry and Lichfield at this period included the whole of Cheshire, Staffordshire and Derbyshire; all Lancashire south of the Ribble; northern Shropshire (including Shrewsbury); and northern Warwickshire (including Birmingham and Coventry). Ordinations took place on the four Ember Saturdays in the year, and on certain other occasions; lists of ordinands to the degrees of acolyte, subdeacon, deacon and priest were preserved in the ordination registers, a distinction being made between those clerks who were 'regular', i.e., monks, friars, &c., and those who were 'secular', the main body of the clergy. All ordinands were celibate, and those regular, and the secular who obtained benefices, remained so, but only a minority of the secular ordinands ever obtained benefices, and most will doubtless have married later in life. No man might be ordained to subdeacon or higher without proving either that he was of independent means or that he was sponsored by an institution or a gentleman. Most entries in the register of such ordinations therefore have the words 'ad titulum' followed by the name of the religious house that was the sponsor. This is an important indication of the man's origins - boys whose families were monastic tenants, and who were educated by the monks, would naturally be sponsored by the abbey. Only men who were born and bred in the diocese could be ordained by the bishop, unless producing letters dimissory from the bishop of the diocese of their birth. These are the ordinations celebrated on Ember Saturday, 15 March 1511, by bishop Geoffrey Blythe, in Longdon prebendal church.
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Lichfield Diocese Ordinations: Acolytes Secular (1511)
Taxpayers in Sussex (1524-1525)
By Act of Parliament of 1523 (14 & 15 Hen. III, c. 16) a general subsidy was raised, spread over four years, from laymen, clergy and peers. In each of the first two years 1s in the £ was raised from annual income from land; 1s in the £ on capital goods worth over £2 and under £20; and a flat payment of 4d on goods worth from £1 to £2, and also by persons aged 16 and upwards in receipt of £1 per annum in wages. In the third year a further shilling in the pound was payable on land worth £50 and upwards a year; and in the fourth year a shilling in the pound on goods worth £50 and upwards. To raise this revenue, returns were required from every hundred, parish or township. In Sussex, the returns for 1524 and 1525 cover the city of Chichester (divided into Estrata, Westrata, Southstrata, North[strata] and Palenta), the borough of Midhurst, and then the rest of the county divided into rapes, within those into hundreds, and within those into boroughs, tithings, liberties, townships or parishes. It is important to note that the cinque ports of Hastings, Rye and Winchelsea were exempt from the subsidy, except for alien inhabitants; and that the town of Westbourne was also exempted 'as the town was lately destroyed by fire'. Aliens are noted as such, sometimes with nationality; and Brighthelmstone (Brighton), which had been burnt by the French in 1514, is only represented fragmentarily. The Sussex Record Society published this transcript and edition by Julian Cornwall of the 1524 and 1525 returns: the 1524 return was used for the main transcript where possible, names peculiar to the 1524 lists being marked with an asterisk, and those with amendments in 1524 with a dagger. At the foot of each 1524 return the new names from 1525 are given. Only the amount of the assessment is printed (m. = marks). Letters prefixed to the sum give the basis of the assessment, no letter (or G) meaning that it was on goods - A, annual wages; D, annual wages of day-labourers; F, fees or salaries of office; L, lands; P, profits; W, wages; x, no basis stated.
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Taxpayers in Sussex
 (1524-1525)
Tradesmen of York (1272-1558)
No man or woman could trade in the city of York without having obtained 'freedom' of the city.Their names were recorded on the 'Freemen's Roll', or Register of the Freemen of the City of York, which contains about 19,900 names for this period. A list of names was prepared for each year, the year being here reckoned as starting at Michaelmas (29 September) until 1373, and thence at Candlemas (2 February). Each annual list starts with the name of the mayor and the camerarii or chamberlains. The chamberlains were freemen charged with the duty of receiving the fees of the new freemen; of seeing that only freemen traded in the city; and of preparing this roll, which was compiled from the names on their own account books from the receipts for the fees. There are three groups of freemen: those who obtained freedom after serving out an apprenticeship to a freeman; the children of freemen; and those who claimed freedom by 'redemption', i. e. by purchase or gift from the Mayor and Court of Aldermen.
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Tradesmen of York
 (1272-1558)
Inhabitants of Lancashire (1547-1558)
Pleadings and depositions in the Duchy Court of Lancaster from the 1st year of Edward VI to the 5th and 6th of Philip and Mary were edited by lieutenant-colonel Henry Fishwick for the Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society and published in 1899. The records include some long and detailed depositions about the precise facts of the cases: whereas plaintiffs and defendants were by and large from the landed gentry, deponents were often of much humbler stations in life, people who otherwise hardly appear in surviving records.
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Inhabitants of Lancashire
 (1547-1558)
The Company of Free Masons of London (1620)
Edward Conder gathered and published these surviving lists of members of the Fellowship or Mystery or Craft or Company of Free Masons of London from various dates from 1356 onwards. This is a list of those members who subscribed towards providing powder and match for the use of the company in 1620.
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The Company of Free Masons of  London
 (1620)
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