Inq PMs post-Towton

[RobertHauteville]

Much of the county gentry involved in escheatorship and inquisitions would have been mobilised for the Battle of Towton. As that turned into a bloodbath for the Royalists many of the County administrators would have been eliminated.

How long did it take for the Inquisition Post-Mortem process to get going again? i.e. if someone was killed at Towton on 29 Mar 1461 when would their Inq PM have taken place?

[Little Nell]

I haven’t been able to find a definitive list of the names of the high-profile casualties at Towton, but it is acknowledged that the vast majority of the dead were Lancastrian supporters, including the Earl of Northumberland, Lord Clifford (killed the day before the battle), Lord Dacre,  Sir Andrew Trollope, Lord Welles.

 The officals in charge who would have been appointed to oversee IPMs and similar prior to the battle were either supporters of the house of Lancastrians or had managed to keep their heads down and not antagonise higher authorities. 

With the Yorkist victory, the new king (Edward IV) would have appointed new locals.  As was often the way, the Lancastrians were attainted by parliament and generally their lands were forfeit  to the crown – and may well have been awarded to the new king’s supporters.

IPMs for 1461-83 appear in class C 140 at TNA and you can search the catalogue by name for individual IPMs to see when they took place.  Those for Lord Clifford and the Earl of Northumberland took place 1464-65.  There is a published list (List of Inquisitions Post Mortem Henry V-Richard III vol 268, pub List & Index Society 1998) but I can’t find it online anywhere.

Nell 

[RobertHauteville]

Thanks Nell. Would all Writs of Diem clausit extremum have resulted in Chancery Inqs or would some have just been dealt with locally? From the lists I have it seems like quite a few Writs have no corresponding C 140 entry, although wild spellings and a few blanks names don't make searching them that easy..

[Redroger]

Very useful thanks, whilst I have no known Family History connections to Towton, this is most useful from the Archaeological viewpoint.

[Maiden Stone]

Very useful thanks, whilst I have no known Family History connections to Towton, this is most useful from the Archaeological viewpoint.

Also from a historical one.

[Little Nell]

Would all Writs of Diem clausit extremum have resulted in Chancery Inqs or would some have just been dealt with locally?

Sometimes the writ expired before it was dealt with; sometimes it went missing at some point.  The writs were supposed to have been sewn to the inquisition when it was returned to the chancery.  However, not every piece of documentation survived.  Some IPMs were organised locally without a writ.  I have seen a number of instances in the printed calendars where it states that the writ is missing.   For those who held lands in a number of counties, it would be unlikely that all the writs have disappeared. 

Since these IPMs would usually only take place where the deceased was a tenant-in-chief, this might explain what seem like omissions.  If someone else held some of the tenant-in-chief’s lands – a sort of ‘sub-tenant’ - then there would not be an IPM for any of them when they died, unless they also held lands in their own right as a tenant-in-chief.  But they might be mentioned as holding the lands of the tenant-in-chief within that person’s IPM.  So you'd have to read through the text to find reference to them.

The Duchy of Lancaster IPMs are filed in a separate class (DL 7).  There are some strays in the Palatinate of Lancaster class (PL 4).  Palatinate of Durham are in DURH 3, while Cheshire IPMs might be found in CHES 3.  It is also possible to find some in the Exchequer records (E149-50).

I did read somewhere that the escheator remained in office until a new one was nominated/appointed.  So if, after Towton, there were an escheator who did not take either side at the battle, theory says he might have kept the office for a while.  He might have been grateful for the income: by that time, he was paid 40 shillings per IPM.

Nell