Dr Thomas Plume, 1630–1704: his life and legacies in Essex, Kent and Cambridge

Abstract

of the separation between city and county or countryside. While almost all the IPMs look to the lands and resources (like water mills) of the countryside, there are three inquisitions talking of London property (114, 144, 147)) and one each for Bristol (162) and Norwich (137). But for the most part, property in a borough or town was held by different terms, if not necessarily by different men and women. In an overview of this volume – and covering a lot of people of property who died in a short span of years – it is the amount of precise information that could be offered the escheator that stands out. We talk today of a loss of privacy and of the possible intrusiveness of computer hacking. Perhaps an heir coming into property in the reign of Richard III, some of which may have had a shady genealogy, could have made the same charge, though the IPMs as we have them tell a very straightforward tale, perhaps one that had been cleaned up at some time in the past. As we have them, there is only that occasional nod to missing information or the uncertainty of an heir’s age, even if the inquisition might gloss over references to contested lands, disputed birth order and legitimacy, putative values of rents and terms of possession, and perhaps tales of fraud and even of outright theft. But the inquisitions served their purpose, as best we can judge, and we pay tribute to the level of record keeping established in medieval England, as we also do to the impressive labours of the volume’s editor. Gordon McKelvie has presented a worthy contribution to the world of scholarship and he has well-earned our gratitude.