Books published by Devon & Cornwall Record Society

This volume and Volume 56 present the Elizabethan wills and inventories collected by the Exeter Orphans' Court between 1560 and c.1602. The court administered the estates of all 'orphans' (the children of wealthy freemen whose fathers were deceased) within the city. They form the most important series of documents relating to the houses, material culture and social history of people living in Exeter during the latter half of the sixteenth century, including the number of rooms in their homes, their furniture, clothes and kitchen equipment, and the pattern of their debts. They are thus an invaluable resource for anyone interested in everyday life and the household in Elizabethan England.

This volume and Volume 57 present the Elizabethan wills and inventories collected by the Exeter Orphans' Court between 1560 and c.1602. The court administered the estates of all 'orphans' (the children of wealthy freemen whose fathers were deceased) within the city. They form the most important series of documents relating to the houses, material culture and social history of people living in Exeter during the latter half of the sixteenth century, including the number of rooms in their homes, their furniture, clothes and kitchen equipment, and the pattern of their debts. They are thus an invaluable resource for anyone interested in everyday life and the household in Elizabethan England.

Death, burial, and the commemoration of the dead have been much studied by historians in recent years, but far less has been done to make available the sources on which these studies are based. This book sets out to fill the gap with an anthology of the rich and varied evidence that survives from the medieval city of Exeter.It begins with a history of burial practices in the city: where people were buried and why. This is followed by an edition of theonly remaining local burial list, relating to the hospital of St John, and by a register of all the 650 people known to have had a funeral or burial in Exeter between 1050 and 1540 with details of dates and places.The second part of the book deals with wills and executors. It prints the eighteen earliest Exeter wills (1244-1349), and two rare documents drawn up by executors: the inventory of a prosperous widow's possessions (1324) and the impressive, hitherto unedited, executors' accounts of Andrew Kilkenny, dean of Exeter (1302-15). A list of all the surviving Exeter wills up to 1540 (over 700 complete or in part) is also provided.The final section centres on how the deadwere remembered. This contains over a dozen obituary records naming men and women and the dates of their deaths, ranging from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries. The records include some remarkably early lists of members of guilds in the neighbourhood of Exeter, dating from about the year 1100; the obituary list of the Exeter guild of Kalendars in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; the oldest specimens of the cathedral's 'obit accounts' from 1305-7; a document establishing a chantry in 1305; and several 'obit calendars' from Exeter Cathedral.Altogether the volume contains 2 registers of names and 36 documents, nearly all of which are making their first appearance in print. All the documents have been translated into modern English, and they are eminently suitable for use by undergraduates and postgraduates as well as for academic research. There are full introductions to each of the three sections, three maps, eight pages of photographs, a glossary, bibliography, and index.

This volume contains all the surviving early-Stuart surveys of Mariners and Shipping for Devon and Cornwall, including a hitherto unknown one of south Devon discovered in the Pepys Library at Magdalene College Cambridge. From parish to parish, all along the coasts of the two counties and in some cases far inland, the seafaring population is delineated. There are about 6000 names in all, a source for social and maritime historians and especially valuable for family historians in the two counties. Nearly unique in its time as an 'occupation census', the information provides rare glimpses into local life. Included in the Introduction is an analysis of contemporary ships' names.

This volume lists proceedings from the royal court of chancery relating to shipping and seafaring activities in Devon and Cornwall in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They include a variety of complaints and requests, manyrelating to the taking of ships and their cargoes during periods of warfare between England and France. They tell us much about medieval maritime history, as well as about the importance of shipping in Devon and Cornwall.

A richly illustrated exploration of the national and international importance of the early modern Exeter cloth trade.

This carto-bibliography of over 1300 Devon manuscript maps published in two volumes contains details not only of the maps themselves, extracted from 30 separate repositories in addition to some in private hands, but also biographical information on the surveyors who made them, over a third of whom have not appeared in any national cartographic reference book. There is also an Introduction which explains the significance of these, mostly large-scale, Devonmaps and how they fit into the national cartographic picture. The detailed list of maps is arranged in alphabetical order of parish for ease of reference and there is a Personal Names index. There are coloured illustrations of some of the maps and the two volumes will be presented in a slipcase. The volumes will be an indispensable reference tool for all interested in the social history, the landscape and archaeology of Devon.

A study of the British Home Front of the First World War, on a local level, from the perspective of the Lord Lieutenant of Devonshire: the fourth Earl Fortescue.

These Devon parish tax records provide details on thousands of Devonians who are otherwise unrecorded.

The documents printed in this volume comprise parish tax records for eighteen parishes across Devon. These 26 church rates, 1 clerk rate, 13 Easter books, 5 military rates and 21 poor rates not only show the range of taxes payablein the county but also show how differently they were organised from one parish to another. The documents have been drawn from archives in Devon, London and Somerset and have not been previously published. This series will provide details on thousands of Devonians who are otherwise unrecorded.

The documents printed in this volume result from a dispute in the Westminster court of Chancery between two members of the Devon family of Tremayne. At their core is a collection of 85 witness statements describing the activitiesof the lawyer Nicholas Radford on two days in 1438 and 1439. The witnesses range across the social spectrum from the earl of Devon to local labourers. Their detailed testimonies provide a unique insight into their daily lives, and the daily life of the city of Exeter and its hinterland in the first half of the thirteenth century.

Exeter Cathedral is rich in its medieval archives, which record not only its buildings but also its personnel from the thirteenth century onwards. This volume lists the names of about a thousand people who served in the Cathedralbetween 1250 and the Reformation in 1548, including vicars choral, chantry priests and choristers. It provides their biographies as far as these can be constructed. In this way the book recreates a medieval religious community inalmost unparalleled detail, ranging from distinguished musicians to violent or unsatisfactory men, some of whom were dismissed. It also traces many of the boys and men back to their places of origin in Devon and Cornwall, and shows how cathedral clergy often left to work in churches elsewhere in the South West. It is therefore an important resource for local history, providing information about the origins and careers of many clergy of the region's parishchurches.

The Letter Book of Thomas Hill forms one of the most significant survivals of English merchant papers for the seventeenth century. It provides fascinating insights into the world of English merchants at the time of the Restorationof Charles II. It shows not just the importance of family relationships to commerce within the South West of England, but also how these relationships were crucial to conducting trade with continental Europe and across the Atlantic. Thomas Hill's acquaintances included not only other merchants but also well-known men such as Samuel Pepys.

This volume edits the correspondence of Sir Francis and Lady Acland of Killerton, Devon. It brings together a unique collection of written sources for politics in the early twentieth century, ranging from the administrative worldof high politics to constituency electioneering in Cornwall and Devon. The Aclands made a prominent contribution to Liberal party politics in this period and their correspondence covers topics such as the pre-war campaign for female suffrage, the key events of the First World War and the party divisions that followed the fall of Asquith. These letters therefore offer fresh insight into the changing fortunes of Liberalism in this period. They also challenge the assumption that the South West of Britain was a political backwater, covering the remarkable rise and fall of Labour in Cornwall and the tensions generated in rural Devon by Lloyd George's land campaign in the mid-1920s. Notions of family tradition, territorial politics and constituency representation were played out against the competing influences of Devon, Cornwall and Westminster.

From at least the mid-thirteenth century, the Earl of Cornwall, the wealthiest and most politically powerful lord in the county, employed a special official - called the havener - to supervise the administration of his maritime profits in the county. When the Duchy of Cornwall was created in 1337, the havener's duties were expanded, and he was made a permanent salaried official. The office of havener, for which there was no parallel in medieval Britain, allowed the duchy to manage and exploit its maritime properties and prerogatives in a particularly efficient manner. The accounts of the havener record this management, and survive in summary from the late thirteenth century, but inmore detailed, separate accounts from the early fourteenth century. In focusing on the seventy years from 1287 to 1356, this edition allows readers to trace the impact on Cornwall of such major events as the Hundred Years War (begun in 1337) and the devastating plague of the Black Death in 1348-9. The annual accounts of the havener also offer a wealth of information on the development and prosperity of individual ports, including Plymouth, on fishing andthe fish trade, on piracy and privateering, on shipwrecks and 'royal' fish such as whale and porpoise, and on the overseas trade in wine, tin, hides and other goods. Particularly fascinating are the glimpses we can see of the Spanish, French, Irish and English traders, shipmasters, and fishers who visited Cornish shores, and the insights we gain about the people of medieval Cornwall - merchants, fishers, mariners, wreckers, pirates and even peasants - whomade their living from the sea.

Between 1832 and 1885 West Cornwall was highly unusual in the British electoral system. Throughout the period the division was never contested at a general election, and the Liberals maintained a stranglehold on both parliamentaryseats. Yet this apparent stability disguised an often turbulent reality of party manoeuvring and personal rivalries.Dr Jaggard's book uncovers much that has been so far unknown about this phenomenon. The introduction surveysWest Cornwall politics between the First and Third Reform Acts, suggesting how the Liberals' hegemony was established and maintained. Both the numerical strength of Methodism in the division, together with corrosive rivalries among the county's Conservatives, played a part, but the papers suggest other factors at work too. Prominent among them immediately after 1867 was the Liberal party's organisation, and the prominence within it of men of new wealth such as the miner-banker J M Williams.As a snapshot of the mid-Victorian electoral system in action the papers widen our understanding of local and national politics, particularly reasons for the electoral success of the Gladstonian Liberal party.

This volume for 1997 contains transcriptions of all the 266 probate inventories that could be traced for the parish of Uffculme, Devon, together with abstracts of the accompanying wills and administrations which have survived. Added to these are 322 further abstracts of wills and administrations under the Salisbury jurisdiction (and now housed at the Wiltshire Record Office in Trowbridge) which have no surviving inventories. These further wills and administrations extend to the end of the year 1800 (with a few in the Dean of Salisbury's list beyond that date). Where possible, notes are included on related burial and marriage entries taken from the Parish Registers.The survivalrate of probate inventories for Devon is poor, as so many perished with the wills when the Exeter Probate Registry was destroyed in the Blitz in 1942. The Uffculme ones escaped because Uffculme was a Peculiar Parish in the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Salisbury and were kept in Salisbury during the war. The publication of this volume will give an insight into the sort of information the historian may gain from this type of document as well as providing aspects of life in Uffculme and farming and woollen cloth-making

This comprises the household accounts of the only noble family then resident in Devon. Remarkable for their richness and diversity, the collection of documents has not been previously published and will considerably add to our understanding of the county's social history in the seventeenth century. The rare survival of parallel London and provincial accounts allows invaluable comparisons and analysis which will be of wide appeal. The accounts recorded thehousehold's very fabric from the servants' financial particulars (including their wages, clothing and diet) to minute details of such purchases as furniture, silver, musical instruments and pictures. There are also recurring entries for the planting of the extensive terraced garden and unusual entries such as the purchase of an organ from Gloucester and the construction of the Great Coach. The continual movement of the Earl and Countess between Devon and London is shown and this is of added significance given that the Earl was the county's leading Royalist and the accounts cover the entire Civil War period. There are accounts for the Earl's diet in 1642 while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London and the volume also includes the Countess' personal account book in which she recorded their Civil War involvement.

These records, of three gentry families from east, west and south Devon, are remarkable for their richness and diversity and provide a unique insight into seventeenth-century life. They illustrate every aspect of the running of the household including the duties of the servants, payments to visiting musicians, purchases of clothing, building accounts and consumption of provisions. In particular the volume includes the kitchen account for Sydenham detailingthe gentry diet, including the importing of wine, the making of venison, woodcock, salmon, quince, lumber and turkey pies, and the purchase of all provisions. The seasons of the year are clearly seen in the accounts including lists of guests for meals at Christmas through Twelfth Night.

The Redvers earls of Devon were one of the leading families of southern England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with large estates in Devon, Dorset, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Over 200 charters have survived before1217 which relate to them, fully edited for the first time in this volume. The charters record the family's history, its part in national politics, and its estates. They also tell us about the religious houses, towns, economy andpeople of the region.There is a full introduction followed by an edition of the charters, with a summary of each one in English, a careful Latin text, and scholarly apparatus and notes. There are three maps, a genealogical table, a glossary of technical terms and a detailed index.

Exeter possesses the best series of local customs accounts from medieval England, beginning in 1266 and surviving for almost 70 per cent of the years up to 1498. They are also far more complete than other local accounts: listing ships' names, home ports, shipmasters and dates of arrival, as well as the importers and their cargoes. Equally remarkable is their focus on coastal as well as overseas traffic, unlike the better known national customs accounts which recorded only overseas trade. From the Exeter accounts we can follow the movements of foreign and domestic shipping, grain imports during the great Famine of 1315-17, and the identity of the merchants, shipmasters and marinerswho carried on the various kinds of trade.Dr Kowaleski's introduction provides the first detailed account of the port of Exeter and its activities during this period, followed by a complete translation of the surviving accounts from 1266 to 1321. The book also includes a specimen Latin account, a glossary of weights and measures, map, and full indexes.

Exeter has one of the best-preserved medieval city archives in England, and the receivers' accounts are unusually early of their kind. First extant in 1304, they list the income and expenditure of the city corporation each year, thereby throwing light on Exeter before, during, and after the Black Death. The topography of the city, property holding and the economy are all featured, as are city government, law and order and civic entertainments. Important people are mentioned visiting Exeter: judges, bishops, noblemen and royalty such as Princess Joan and the duchess of Brittany. Altogether there is a detailed and delightful picture of life in a medieval city.This edition provides a full translation of the first eleven accounts with an introduction and index, together with specimens of four other early accounts from the 14th century: a city rental, a murage account relating to the city walls, an account of the wardens of the Exe bridge, and the first surviving receiver's account from Barnstaple.