On Tuesday, September 5, 2023 at 8:39:14 AM UTC-7, taf wrote:
> On Tuesday, September 5, 2023 at 5:19:55 AM UTC-7, JPD wrote:
> > On Monday, September 4, 2023 at 8:22:09 PM UTC-4, taf wrote:
> >
> > > Hard to say with so little context. P[lainti]ff? but the syntax is odd for this. Is it possible those were the 'long s'? If so then 'P[atrone]ss for the manor . . .' would work.
> > >
> > > This may be relevant:
> > > https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/b7a3dda7-3353-4145-b9a7-4e51e4778280
> > Thanks for the link.
> >
> > To be exact, this relates to John Pelham and not his wife. And the exact quote from Comber would be: "P'ff [with the ff being superscripted and are not long ss] in fine for Trevere, as J. P. junr., 1419/20, and grants same to his son and wife 1449/50;" This John is the son of Sir John Pelham who captured John, King of France, at the Battle of Poitiers.
> Definitely plaintiff (i.e. querent) then. Always when you find reference to a fine, you should look and see if there is a published collection of feet of fines for the given county. If quick overview of what is available online is Chris Phillips' site here:
> http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/index.html
> with county lists for available feet of fine publications here:
> http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/fines/counties.shtml
> Sussex: http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/fines/sussex.shtml
>
> He is listing only the British History Online version for the relevant volume (I have sent him an update), but it can also be viewed on Google Books or Family Search:
> https://books.google.com/books?id=59hAAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
> https://www.familysearch.org/library/books/records/item/109713-an-abstract-of-feet-of-fines-relating-to-the-county-of-sussex-vol-23
>
> 19 Richard II
> 2667. WALTER GASCOIGNE, JOHN ROME, clerk, JOHN REDE, JOHN JOYNOUR, clerk, and JOHN BURGOYNE the younger v. HUGH BURNELL, chivaler, and JOYCE his wife, HUGH LA ZOUCHE, chivaler, and JOAN his wife and WILLIAM CROUCHERE, rector of church of Fendrayton; manors of FULBURN called SOUCHEFEE and SWAUESEY and advowsons of priory and chapel of SWAUESEY in Cambridgeshire, manor of ASSHEBY LA ZOUCHE in Leicestershire, and manors of TREUERE and NOTTEBORNE and advowsons of church of CHILTYNGTON and chapel of TREUERE in Sussex; to WALTER, etc., and heirs of JOHN BURGOYNE. (D.C.: File 57. No. 282.)
>
> 10 Henry IV
> 2789. ROBERT RIKEDON, THOMAS REMYS, RICHARD FOX and WILLIAM ALEYN v. HUGH BURNELL, knight; manors of TREUERE, NOTTEBOURNE and CHILTYNGTON, and advowson of church of said manor of CHILTYNGTON which JOHN PELLAM, chivaler, and JOAN his wife hold for the life of JOAN; to THOMAS, etc., and his heirs. (File 82. No. 2.)
>
> 7 Henry V
> 2878. JOHN PELHAM the younger, chivaler, JOHN WALLER, RICHARD LEUERER and PETER ALLERTON, clerk, v. ROBERT RIKEDON; manors of TREUERE, NOTTEBOURNE and CHILTYNGTON, and advowson of church of same manor of CHILTYNGTON, which JOHN PELHAM, knight, father of the said JOHN PELHAM, and JOAN his wife hold for the life of JOAN; to PETER, etc., and his heirs. (File 84. No. 14.)
>
> The original fines themselves, being fictional lawsuits, don't actually express the true nature of the transactions, and so one is always reading into the documents what is really going on. However, the abstracts in this volume are rendered more opaque by their brevity. Given the continuity of Hugh Burnell in the first two, it looks like it may be the same Joan who was wife of Hugh la Zouche in the first, then holding for life in the latter two as the (remarried) wife of John Pelham. The last looks like it may have been designed to convert this life holding into a Pelham inheritance.
>

Some context: one of the IPMs for Hugh la Zouche reports that he held River (Trevere) and Nutbourne, that he died 4 July 1399 leaving a widow Joan, and that his heir was Joyce, wife of Hugh Burnell, daughter of John Boutard, son of Joyce, sister of Alan, father of Hugh.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951002116531n&view=1up&seq=43&q1=55

Joyce died 1 Jan 1400, s.p., her heirs being relatives of their father John Buttetourte: two sisters who were nuns (Maud and Alice Buttetourt), plus another, Joyce, wife of Adam Peeshalle, a grandnephew (Maurice Berkeley, son of Maurice B, son of Katherine, John's sister), and two grandnieces (Alice and Mary Wykes, daughters of the late Joan, wife of John Wykes, daughter of Alice Kiryell [nee Buttetourt], another sister of John B.).
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951d00889656z&view=1up&seq=108&q1=burnell

taf, thank you once again. I am learning a lot and trying to absorb it. It is just amazing what records are available for England online. I am impressed that I can drill down and get to the actual record online.

In France they are bringing records online, but not like this. It is taking them forever to digitize the rest of the Pièces originales of the Cabinet des titres. And the local departmental archives tend to digitize more modern records and not records going back to the Middle Ages. Also, in France, we just do not have a lot of wills, most estate matters were settled in the marriage contract. So I am having to come to grips with the way wills are handled in England. Of course, a lot of records were also destroyed in France, at least in the areas I tend to research.

It is good to have an embarrassment of riches!

On Tuesday, September 5, 2023 at 9:37:35 AM UTC-7, JPD wrote:
> Also, in France, we just do not have a lot of wills, most estate matters were settled in the marriage contract.

For more recent times, at least in Bas Rhin, there are also notarial records of partition that often (but not always) give the death date of the deceased and name their heirs, with ages, spouses (for married daughters) and locations. The town where some of my people came from lost most of their church records prior to the late 18th century, but with a combination of marriage contracts, partitions, and land transfers, most of the families can be traced back another 100-150 years, with partitions for the majority of ancestors, male and female. (Not online via the archives, but fortunately someone has taken a special interest in this town paid a researcher to abstract a large number of these records, posting them to their personal website on the town's genealogy.)

taf

You are right taf that partitions as well as inventories after death in France can be extremely informative. Also, donations before death are interesting ( I just came across one for my great-great-grandparents living in Wisconsin!). However, the problem in France, compared to Québec, is finding notarial records. In Québec if I see reference to a notarial act, then it is relatively easy to track it down. When I find a reference to a notarial act in France the odds of finding it are pretty slim. Between notarial papers still being held in private hands, the loss of acts due to war and disasters, and the lack of indexing, it is extremely hard to track these notarial records.

I perhaps should not be so harsh on French archives and libraries. The Bibliothèque nationale de France's Gallica website is truly wonderful and more and more is being added to it. The facts that most of the Cabinet des titres is now available online makes researching extremely easy and cheap. And I have found the Salle de lecture virtuelle at the Archives nationales to be particularly valuable for locating notarial records for Paris. It makes sense that the departmental archives would prioritize censuses, civil registration, and parish registers over medieval documents as this information is helpful to more people starting out to research their ancestry.

That said, I am still amazed at the online resources I am finding in England with your help.

Another observation about the difference between British and French research in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern periods. Latin! In my French research I rarely run into Latin except on seals or some cartularies for monasteries. If you go back far enough in France, then you start seeing more Latin documents. However, with Irish, Scottish, and English research I stumbled upon Latin document much sooner and they are more prevalent.

Just saying, not complaining. I can struggle through the Latin.

On Friday, September 8, 2023 at 2:18:56 PM UTC-7, JPD wrote:
> Another observation about the difference between British and French research in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern periods. Latin! In my French research I rarely run into Latin except on seals or some cartularies for monasteries. If you go back far enough in France, then you start seeing more Latin documents. However, with Irish, Scottish, and English research I stumbled upon Latin document much sooner and they are more prevalent.
>

I have run into Latin in late-17th/early 18th century Catholic church registers in both Bas Rhin and Moselle, but in terms of documents, no, but then I haven't looked at too many documents.

As to England, Latin became entrenched as the language of law and so persisted. Some have suggested that, like its use in medicine and like blazon in heraldry, its prolonged usage in law served to reinforce exclusivity of practice and practitioners. In general, there are certain classes of documents that were recorded in Latin, some as recent as the 19th century, and others classes that switched to the vernacular as early as the 15th century, or even earlier.

On Fri, 8 Sep 2023 14:18:53 -0700 (PDT), JPD <dulongj@habitant.org>
wrote in soc.genealogy.medieval:

>Another observation about the difference between British and French research in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern periods. Latin! In my French research I rarely run into Latin except on seals or some cartularies for monasteries. If you go back far enough in France, then you start seeing more Latin documents. However, with
Irish, Scottish, and English research I stumbled upon Latin document much sooner and they are more prevalent.
>
>Just saying, not complaining. I can struggle through the Latin.

There is a law in France that made French the official language for
records in 1539. So official records like notary records were in
French from this date. As for religious records, they are from a
different authority.

Denis

--
Denis Beauregard - généalogiste émérite (FQSG)
Les Français d'Amérique du Nord - http://www.francogene.com/gfan/gfan/998/
French in North America before 1722 - http://www.francogene.com/gfna/gfna/998/
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