Add this eBook to your basket to receive access to all 1,912 records. Our indexes include entries for the spelling harper. In the period you have requested, we have the following 1,912 records (displaying 1 to 10): 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. Yorkshire Charters
(1220-1229) A large accumulation of documents preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, formerly constituted the antiquarian collections of Anthony a Wood, Roger Dodsworth, Ralph Thoresby, Thomas Martin of Palgrave, Thomas Tanner bishop of St Asaph, Dr Richard Rawlinson, Richard Furney archdeacon of Surrey, and Richard Gough. A calendar of these was prepared by William H. Turner and published in 1878 under the title 'Calendar of Charters and Rolls preserved in the Bodleian Library'. The word 'charters' is here used in a rather loose sense, including virtually any manuscript or copy of a manuscript, but the bulk of the contents consists of mediaeval deeds of conveyance. Turner's calendar deals with each briefly, naming the principal parties and the nature of the deed, but hardly ever lists the witnesses. Many of these charters were undated (dating of deeds did not become general until around 1350) or so damaged or defective ('mutilated' is Turner's usual description) as no longer to display a legible date. However, he contrived, from the style of the script and/or the nature of the contents, to estimate dates in such cases. The sample scan is from the start of the Bedfordshire list. | Sample scan, click to enlarge
| Patent Rolls: entries for Bedfordshire
(1277-1278) Calendars of the patent rolls of the reign of king Edward I are printed in the Calendars of State Papers: but these cover only a fraction of the material on the rolls. From 1881 to 1889 the reports of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Record Office also include calendars of other material from the rolls - about five times as many entries as in the State Papers - predominantly mandates to the royal justices to hold sessions of oyer and terminer to resolve cases arising locally; but also other general business. The calendar for the 6th year of king Edward I [20 November 1277 to 19 November 1278], hitherto unindexed, is covered here. | Sample scan, click to enlarge
| Worcestershire Inhabitants
(1280) The Worcestershire Lay Subsidy roll of about 1280 lists lay inhabitants of each township of the shire and of each ward of the city of Worcester, with the amount of tax payable by each. Latin. | Sample scan, click to enlarge
| 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. | Sample scan, click to enlarge
| Cheshire Court Rolls
(1259-1290) Civil and criminal cases for most of Cheshire were handled by the county courts. Here we have the county court rolls for November 1259 to August 1260, December 1281 to September 1282, and December 1286 to September 1289. The city of Chester exercised its own jurisdiction, and here we have crown pleas and presentments from 1287 to 1297. The royal manor of Macclesfield in the east of the county had three independent jurisdictions - the hundred, forest and borough. Royal justices in eyre dealt with civil and criminal cases from the hundred and forest during their yearly visits, and here we have records from 1284 to 1290. Also covered by this index is an Inquest of Service in Time of War in Wales of 1288, listing knight's fees in the county. | Sample scan, click to enlarge
| Pontefract Cartulary
(1100-1300) The Cluniac monastery of St John the Evangelist at Pontefract (Pomfret) in the West Riding of Yorkshire, was founded in the 11th century by Robert de Lascy. The grants of land made to the priory from then well into the 13th century were copied into a cartulary or chartulary which eventually came to Godfrey Wentworth of Woolley Park. This was edited by Richard Holmes and published by Yorkshire Archaeological Society in 1899 and 1902. The individuals named are mainly local landowners and tenants, canons, servants and wellwishers of the monastery. The charters before 1250 are often undated: the numbering of the charters is modern, and amounts to 561. The cartulary itself contains 11 fasciculi, to which Holmes gave these section names - I. The Seigniorial Charters; II. The Ecclesiastical Charters; III. Royal Charters and Confirmations; IV. The Local Charters (Pontefract &c.); V. The Ledstone Charters; VI. The Ledsham Charters; VII. Miscellaneous Charters; VIII. The Peckfield and other Charters; IX. and X. Scarborough and other Charters; and XI. Leases to Tenants. Ledston(e), Ledsham and Peckfield are all close to Pontefract, as is most of the property. | Sample scan, click to enlarge
| Grantees of offices, commissions and pardons
(1317-1321) The Patent Rolls are the Chancery enrolments of royal letters patent. Those for the 11th to the 14th years of the reign of king Edward II (8 July 1317 to 7 July 1321) were edited for the Public Record Office by G. F. Handcock, and published in 1903. The main contents are royal commissions and grants; ratifications of ecclesiastical estates; writs of aid to royal servants and purveyors; and pardons. Most extensive are the commissions of oyer and terminer to justices to investigate complaints about specific crimes and wrongs in particular counties. | Sample scan, click to enlarge
| Chancery Warrants
(1244-1326) Warrants were issued by the kings of England to the royal chancery: most of these warrants led to further proceedings which are recorded on the Charter Rolls, Patent Rolls, Fine Rolls, Close Rolls or the Inquisitions: but archivists have identified a large number of warrants for which there are no such equivalent records, and those for the reigns of Edward I and Edward II are gathered here. Most of the entries relate to England and Wales, but with occasional items referring to Ireland and the English possessions in France. | Sample scan, click to enlarge
| 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 Cheshire and North Wales
(1320-1329) The county of Cheshire had palatine status, being in some measure independent of the rest of England: moreover, from the Statute of Wales of 1284, after king Edward I's subjugation of North Wales, until the union of England and Wales in 1536 to 1543, much of the administration of North Wales (county Flint in particular) was directed from Chester. When the Chester Recognizance Rolls were moved from Chester to the Public Record Office, they were placed among the Welsh Records. These rolls, so called because they do include recognizances (of debts &c.) among their contents, are in fact the Chancery Rolls of the palatinate, containing enrolments of charters, letters patent, commissions and other documents issued under the seal of the palatinate. Deeds and other evidences of a private nature were also enrolled on them. A calendar of the Recognizance Rolls from their commencement to the end of the reign of Henry IV was prepared by Peter Turner and included in the 36th Annual Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records in 1875. We have now indexed this, dividing the enrolments into decades. This is the period from the 13th year of the reign of king Edward II to the 3rd year of king Edward III. | Sample scan, click to enlarge
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