Nat Alcock - Tracing History Through Title Deeds: A Guide for Family & Local Historians

TRACING HISTORY

THROUGH

TITLE DEEDS

FAMILY HISTORY FROM PEN & SWORD

Tracing Secret Service Ancestors

Tracing Your Air Force Ancestors

Tracing Your Ancestors

Tracing Your Ancestors from 1066 to 1837

Tracing Your Ancestors Through

Death Records

Tracing Your Ancestors Through

Family Photographs

Tracing Your Ancestors Using the Census

Tracing Your Ancestors Childhood

Tracing Your Ancestors Parish Records

Tracing Your Aristocratic Ancestors

Tracing Your Army Ancestors 2nd Edition

Tracing Your Birmingham Ancestors

Tracing Your Black Country Ancestors

Tracing Your British Indian Ancestors

Tracing Your Canal Ancestors

Tracing Your Channel Islands Ancestors

Tracing Your Coalmining Ancestors

Tracing Your Criminal Ancestors

Tracing Your East Anglian Ancestors

Tracing Your East End Ancestors

Tracing Your Edinburgh Ancestors

Tracing Your First World War Ancestors

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors:

The Gallipoli Campaign

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: The Somme

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: Ypres

Tracing Your Huguenot Ancestors

Tracing Your Jewish Ancestors

Tracing Your Labour Movement Ancestors

Tracing Your Lancashire Ancestors

Tracing Your Leeds Ancestors

Tracing Your Legal Ancestors

Tracing Your Liverpool Ancestors

Tracing Your London Ancestors

Tracing Your Medical Ancestors

Tracing Your Merchant Navy Ancestors

Tracing Your Naval Ancestors

Tracing Your Northern Ancestors

Tracing Your Pauper Ancestors

Tracing Your Police Ancestors

Tracing Your Prisoner of War Ancestors:

The First World War

Tracing Your Railway Ancestors

Tracing Your Royal Marine Ancestors

Tracing Your Rural Ancestors

Tracing Your Scottish Ancestors

Tracing Your Second World War Ancestors

Tracing Your Servant Ancestors

Tracing Your Service Women Ancestors

Tracing Your Shipbuilding Ancestors

Tracing Your Tank Ancestors

Tracing Your Textile Ancestors

Tracing Your Trade and Craftsmen Ancestors

Tracing Your Welsh Ancestors

Tracing Your West Country Ancestors

Tracing Your Yorkshire Ancestors

A Guide for Family and Local Historians

N.W. Alcock

Published in association with

The National Archives

First published in Great Britain in 2017

PEN & SWORD FAMILY HISTORY

an imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

47 Church Street

Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS

The National Archives logo device is a trade mark of

The National Archives and is used under licence

Copyright N.W. Alcock, 2017

ISBN 978 1 52670 345 3

eISBN 978 1 52670 347 7

Mobi ISBN 978 1 52670 346 0

The right of N.W. Alcock to be identified as Author

of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance

with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library.

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* * *

Jacket captions: (a) Top left: Lease of a lease and release of 1692 (TNA, E 330/31; see ).

1.1 Letter from Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury.

1.2 Early thirteenth-century lease of a house in Coventry.

1.3 Copper plaque on the gate-arch of Cooling Castle.

1.4 Deeds for an annuity from 1505 to 1757.

1.5 Sixteenth- to eighteenth-century wooden deed boxes.

1.6 A family settlement for the Marquess of Hertford.

2.1 Family tree of Benjamin Woodcock of Coventry.

2.2 Ancestry of Ann Edwards of Sherborne, Warwickshire.

2.3 Family links between the Wymond and Austin families in early fourteenth-century Coventry.

2.4 Social relationships in Coventry, 16801700.

2.5 Family tree for the Fisher family of Temple Balsall, Warwickshire.

2.6 Plan of Avins Yard, Atherstone, Warwickshire.

2.7 Nineteenth-century property boundaries in part of central Coventry.

2.8 Medieval tenement boundaries in part of central Coventry.

2.9 Plan of a courtyard house in Botolph Lane, London.

2.10 Fourteenth-century lease of property in Coventry.

2.11 The development of a Coventry court.

2.12 Successive plans of a Coventry factory.

4.1 A nineteenth-century deed endorsement.

4.2 Endorsements on a seventheenth-century Coventry deed.

4.3 Eighteenth-century printed blank deed form for a mortgage.

4.4 The lease of a lease and release for a house in Derby.

4.5 Terrier of open-field land at Thurlaston, Warwickshire.

4.6 A bond to keep the covenants in an indenture.

4.7 The left- and right-hand indentures of a fine.

4.8 Exemplification of a recovery.

4.9 Example of letters patent.

4.10 Endorsement of Chancery enrolment.

4.11 A medieval gift (conveyance).

4.12 A medieval letter of attorney.

4.13 Eighteenth-century copy of court roll.

4.14 Memorandum for enrolment on a manor court roll.

4.15 Instructions for a manor court steward to carry out a Common Recovery.

4.16 Fifteenth-century copy of court roll.

3.1Deed classes in The National Archives.

3.2Deeds enrolled in the royal courts.

4.1Calendar table for the Commonwealth period.

4.2Types and shapes of post-medieval deeds.

4.3Clauses of post-medieval indentures.

4.4Post-medieval indentures: summary of principal clauses.

4.5Conditions in post-medieval leases.

4.6Shapes of medieval deeds.

4.7Initial words and action clauses of medieval deeds.

4.8Abuttals of a Coventry house.

This book has a new title and a new publisher, but it is otherwise a direct successor to my previous book, Old Title Deeds. It has the same intention: to explain the significance of title deeds for the study of local and family history, and more generally for wider aspects of history. The period since the second edition of Old Title Deeds has seen an explosion in the use of personal computers, laptops and tablets, and of digital photography. With this has come important development in the availability of online catalogues at many record offices. All these changes are mentioned where appropriate. However, the essentials of the study of title deeds like the deeds themselves are unchanged, so this book tells the same story as its predecessor, though with changes of emphasis and detail.