Add this eBook to your basket to receive access to all 302 records. Our indexes include entries for the spelling forester. In the period you have requested, we have the following 302 records (displaying 111 to 120): These sample scans are from the original record. You will get scans of the full pages or articles where the surname you searched for has been found. Your web browser may prevent the sample windows from opening; in this case please change your browser settings to allow pop-up windows from this site. Landowners and tenants in Yorkshire
(1345-1485)
Inquisitions ad quod damnum were held by the appropriate sheriff or escheator (or other officer in whose bailiwick the matter in question might lie) to investigate cases in which the royal or public interest might be damaged by proposed alienation or settlement of land (especially alienation to religious uses, into mortmain). The key findings from these inquisitions were as to the tenure of the land and the service due from it; its yearly value; the lands remaining to the grantor, and whether they sufficed to discharge all duties and customs due from him; and whether he can still be put upon juries, assizes and recognitions, so that the country be not burdened by his withdrawal from them. Generally speaking, this process had the makings of a system of licensing such alienations, and raising money in proportion to the valuations. Equally, there are many items that deal with subjects such as the closing of public roads, the felling or inclosing of woods, or the proposed grant of liberties or immunities. A calendar of these inquisitions from the 19th year of the reign of king Edward III to the 2nd year of Richard III was prepared by the Public Record Office and published in 1906. We have now indexed this calendar by surname and county. Most of the individuals appearing in the calendar are either pious individuals seeking to make grants to religious bodies for the sake of their souls; or landowners securing the disposition and settling of their real estate. But some other names do appear - tenants, trustees, chaplains and clerks. | Sample scan, click to enlarge
| Officers and tenants of the Scottish crown
(1488-1496)
In 1887 the 10th volume of Rotuli Scaccarii Regum Scotorum, or The Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, was published in Edinburgh as part of the Scottish Series of Chronicles and Memorials. The main text is a transcript in extended Latin, but with some passages reduced to an abstract in English (in italics), of the rolls of the Scottish royal exchequer from 19 June 1488 to 12 October 1496 (rolls cclxxviii to ccxcv, old numbers ccxciii to cccix). This more or less continuous series alternates between accounts of the Ballivi ad Extra (royal chamberlains, lessees of lordships, rangers of wards, receivers &c) and those of the Custumars (receivers of customary payments and similar revenues) and bailies (bailiffs) of burghs (boroughs). In all, they give a summary description of all these sources of royal revenue - and not only mention the payers and receivers in general, but also refer to many occasional payments to and receipts from individuals hardly otherwise found in the surviving records. An appendix (pages 629 to 763) of rentals of royal property throughout Scotland in the same period gives a rich harvest of personal names; and another (764-772), an Index in Libros Responsionum, lists persons to whom sasine (seisin) was granted in 1492 to 1496. | Sample scan, click to enlarge
| Early records of Wells cathedral, in Somerset
(1001-1500)
Three early registers of the dean and chapter of Wells - the Liber Albus I (White Book; R I), Liber Albus II (R III), and Liber Ruber (Red Book; R II, section i) - were edited by W. H. B. Bird for the Historical Manuscripts Commissioners and published in 1907. These three books comprise, with some repetition, a cartulary of possessions of the cathedral, with grants of land dating back as early as the 8th century, well before the development of hereditary surnames in England; acts of the dean and chapter; and surveys of their estates, mostly in Somerset. | Sample scan, click to enlarge
| Inhabitants of Leicester
(1327-1509)
The Corporation of Leicester commissioned the publication (in 1901) of extracts from the borough archives of 1327 to 1509, edited by Mary Bateson. This volume brings together several important sources: a coroner's roll of 1327; the merchant gild rolls; tax returns; court rolls; rentals; mayoral accounts, &c. All the Latin and French texts are accompanied by English translations. Not all the tax rolls surviving for this period are printed: but full lists of names are given for tallages of 1336 (pp. 34-40); 1347-8 (69-71); and 1354 (93-99); subsidy rolls of 1492 (331-334) and 1497 (351-353); and a benevolence roll of 1505 (370-374). There is a calendar of conveyances (388-446), and a list of mayors, bailiffs, and other officials (447-462); and, finally, entrants into the merchant gild
from 1465 to 1510. 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). 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 thitherto the two were not necessarily the same, and some of the merchant gild members were not resident in the borough, merely traded there. | Sample scan, click to enlarge
| 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. | Sample scan, click to enlarge
| Tenants, founders and incumbents of Lancashire chantries
(1546-1554)
Chantries were established to perform services for the souls of their founders and other faithful dead, including annual obits and anniversaries at which alms were usually distributed. The chantries could be at an existing altar in a parish church, a new altar in a side chapel of an existing church, in a new chapel in the churchyard or some miles from an existing church: few were founded before 1300, and most date from 1450 to 1500. Hospitals were places provided by similar foundations to receive the poor and weak; there were also religious guilds, brotherhoods and fraternities, and colleges (like large chantries at which three or more secular priests lived in common). An Act of Parliament of 1545 gave king Henry VIII the power to dissolve such chantries, chapels, &c., the proceeds to be devoted to the expenses of the wars in France and Scotland. Commissioners were appointed 14 February 1546 to survey the chantries and seize their property, and from 1546 to 1548 the commissioners produced these certificates giving brief details of the establishment and nature of each foundation, with an inventory of valuables and rental of lands. The individuals named in the certificates are thus the founder, the present incumbent, and the tenants whose rents provided the chantry's income. All the surviving certificates for Lancashire were edited by the Reverend F. R. Raines for the Chetham Society, and published from 1862. | Sample scan, click to enlarge
| 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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| Inhabitants of Aberdeen
(1398-1570)
Extracts from the first 27 surviving volumes of Aberdeen burgh (borough) records were made by John Stuart for the Spalding Club and published in 1844. Although it is believed that the town records were preserved on parchment rolls until about 1380, and in book form thereafter, by 1591 the town clerk remarked that there existed of the earliest records only 'peces and partis of four ald imperfyt and informall buikis conumitt and eitten be mothes, for aldnes and antiquite euill to be red, yit to be keipit for a monument be resoun of the antiquite'. The regular series of books surviving comprised 61 folio volumes from 1398 to 1745, and these contained the proceedings of the Council of the Burgh, of the Baillie Court, and the Guild Court. | Sample scan, click to enlarge
| Scottish litigants, rebels and cautioners: excluded names
(1569-1578)
The Privy Council of Scotland exercised a superior judicial authority in the kingdom, and consequently received and dealt with a constant stream of petitions, as well as dealing with the internal security of the state. This register of the council from July 1569 to June 1578, in the reign of king James VI, was edited by John Hill Burton, Historiographer Royal for Scotland, and published under the direction of the Lord Clerk Register of Scotland in 1878. Some of the individuals mentioned are the complainants, those of whom they complained, and the sureties on both sides: at this period, some of the complainants are alleging serious attacks, often of a feuding nature. Many of the bonds entered into by the cautioners are promises to keep the peace towards such enemies. Failure to answer to the council when summoned was a serious contempt, leading to being denounced a rebel, with serious consequences. But 'horning' was also used in the pursuit of debts: there was no imprisonment for debt in Scotland, but a creditor could have an obstinate debtor ordered, in the sovereign's name, to pay what was due, failing which, the debtor could be put to the horn, denounced as a rebel, and imprisoned as a rebel. In his preface to the first volume, Burton remarked that "There might perhaps be objections to the abundance of names of persons and places unknown to fame; but it was considered that in such a work the proper names of all persons and places occurring in the Register should be preserved, to be at the service of genealogical as well as historical investigators". But by this, second, volume, he decided that complete coverage was impractical, with "the crowding in of proper names, all but a few being the names of obscure persons ... Borderers are called up in considerable groups, and ordered to find, or recorded as having found, sureties for giving compensation to persons plundered, or for good conduct for the future. Several burgesses are sometimes entered in a minute about a Corporation quarrel. When the particulars of unimportant private litigations are omitted, the names remain." He therefore devised this 'Index of Names excluded from the Text', giving name, conditions, and date in register.
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| Anglo-Scottish relations
(1509-1589)
The State Papers Relating to Scotland is the collection of English government documents dealing with relations with Scotland when the latter was still an independent country.
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